lted. He obtained at the same time a pension of three thousand
pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late changes had deeply mortified,
was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation. He
became Duke of Leeds. It had taken him little more than twenty years to
climb from the station of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest
rank in the peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created
Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that Bedford
had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat reluctantly
accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom,
and gave a very sensible reason for the preference. An Earl who had
a numerous family might send one son to the Temple and another to a
counting house in the city. But the sons of a Duke were all lords; and
a lord could not make his bread either at the bar or on Change. The old
man's objections, however, were overcome; and the two great houses
of Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by
friendship and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and
common triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it
is in the power of the Crown to confer. [531]

The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that the King
had set out for the Continent. He had, before his departure, consulted
with his ministers about the means of counteracting a plan of naval
operations which had been formed by the French government. Hitherto
the maritime war had been carried on chiefly in the Channel and the
Atlantic. But Lewis had now determined to concentrate his maritime
forces in the Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of
Marshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the whole
of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace. Accordingly,
Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men of war, set sail
from Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and passed the Straits of
Gibraltar on the fourth of May.

William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined to send
Russell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the combined fleet
of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain in the British seas
under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. Talmash was to embark on
board of this squadron with a large body of troops, and was to attack
Brest, which would, it was supposed, in the absence of Tourville and his
fifty-three vessels,