Note 189 — Chapter X
Reading edition
Mr. (afterwards Sir Ralph) Payne, (K.B.,) M.P. for Shaftesbury. He seems to have soon discovered his failure, for in 1771 he accepted the government of the Leeward Islands, where he possessed a considerable estate, an ancestor of his having settled in Antigua during the civil wars. His splendid hospitality and imposing deportment, not less than his good nature, made him very popular with the West Indians, and it was to their great regret that he returned to England in 1775 to resume his political career. This, however, proved far from successful. All he obtained was the Clerkship of the Green Cloth, which he subsequently lost in consequence of his connecting himself with Fox. His house, however, became the favourite resort of the leaders of the Opposition, partly from his own agreeableness, and more so from the attractions of his wife, a highly accomplished Austrian lady, who was a very general favourite. It was on seeing her in tears, which she placed with more adroitness than truth to the account of her monkey, who had just died, that Sheridan wrote the well-known ludicrous distich:—
“Alas! poor Ned, My monkey’s dead; I had rather by half It had been Sir Ralph.”
In 1795 Sir Ralph made his peace with Pitt, and was raised to the Irish peerage by the title of Lord Lavington. In 1801 he returned to his former government, and in 1807 died at Antigua, without issue. Lady Lavington survived him, and was left in circumstances so embarrassed, that she applied to the legislature of Antigua for a small pension. (See more of him in a work recently published under the title of “Antigua and the Antiguans.”)—E.