[Chancellor Edward Thurlow]

A companion piece to the full length portrait caricature of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, this print shows a somewhat dejected and introspective Chancellor Edward Thurlow sitting upon the ceremonial woolsack—one of the two primary symbols of his position as Lord High Chancellor of the House of Lords.

One impetus for the two portraits was the ongoing Impeachment Trial of Warren Hastings, the former Governor General of Bengal who had been accused of numerous charges of corruption and mismanagement. Sheridan was one of members of the impeachment committee prosecuting Hastings; Thurlow was the presiding Steward.

As presiding Steward, Thurlow was supposed to be even-handed. But from the beginning of the trial in February 1788, Gillray had portrayed him (along with the King and Queen) as highly partisan. In Blood on Thunder Fording the Red Sea, Thurlow is shown carrying Hastings on his shoulders across a red sea of bloody Indian bodies. In The Bow to the Throne, the bribery implied in the earlier print by the moneybags in Hastings' hands is now explicit. The regal Hastings hands out bribes of roopees and pagodas to Thurlow and Pitt (and apparently anyone else looking to be paid off) while the always money-grubbing Queen Charlotte kisses his foot.

But though the run of seven prints between March 1 and May 16, 1788 featuring Thurlow was certainly the result of the Hastings trial, the specific portrayal of Thurlow in this portrait caricature probably owed more to the recent Regency crisis when Thurlow courted both Whigs and Tories simultaneously, hoping to preserve his long tenure as Chancellor whether Pitt and George III remained in power or found themselves displaced by Fox and the Prince of Wales. The result of this clearly self-interested strategy was increasing isolation as a man who couldn't be trusted by either side. As an anonymous writer of Thurlow's political obituary later put it,

Here lies, beneath the prostituted mace,
A patriot, with but one base wish—place.
Here lies, beneath the prostituted purse,
A peer with but one talent, how to curse. . . .
Statesman, with but one rule his steps to guide
To shun the sinking, take the rising tide.

Thurlow's ultimate fall from power was not until almost three years later when it was satirized by Gillray in The Fall of the Wolsey of the Woolsack (1792, but I can't help but feel that it was presciently foreshadowed in this sensitive print.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Lord Thurlow.
• "Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow," Wikipedia
• "Woolsack," Wikipedia
• "Impeachment of Warren Hastings," Wikipedia
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #42.
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 110.