hich
forms the subject of the present chapter. Immediately after his
return to England from this circumnavigation, Captain Anson was
made rear-admiral of the blue, and shortly afterwards, one of the
commissaries of the Admiralty. In 1746 he was farther promoted to the
rank of Vice-admiral; and in the winter of 1746-7, was entrusted with
the command of the channel fleet. In May 1747, off Cape Finisterre,
he captured six French ships of the line under the command of Admiral
Jonquiere, which had been dispatched for the protection of the
merchant ships destined for the East and West Indies. On this
occasion, when Mons. St George, one of the French captains,
surrendered his sword to Admiral Anson, he addressed him in the
following terms: _Vous avez vaincu L'Invincible, et La Gloire vous
suit._--"You have defeated the Invincible, and Glory follows you:"
alluding to two of the French ships, the Invincible and the Gloire,
which had surrendered to him.

For this important service to his king and country, he was created a
peer of the realm, by the title of LORD ANSON; and, in 1749, on the
death of Admiral Norris, he was appointed Vice-admiral of England. In
1751, he succeeded to Lord Sandwich, as first Lord Commissioner of the
Admiralty; but, incurring censure for the loss of Minorca, he resigned
this situation in 1756. But, having been acquitted of all blame
relative to that disgraceful affair, after a parliamentary enquiry, he
was reinstated in that high office, which he continued to fill, with
honour to himself and advantage to his country, during the remainder
of his life. While attending upon the Duke of Mecklenburgh Strelitz,
brother to our present queen, to shew him the naval arsenal at
Portsmouth, and the fleet which was then about to sail on the
expedition against the Havannah, he caught a violent cold, of which he
died, at Moor-Park in Hertfordshire, on the 6th of June 1762, in the
sixty-fifth year of his age. Having no issue by his lady, the daughter
of Lord Hardwicke, whom he married in 1748, he left the whole of his
property to his brother.

Lord Anson appears to have been remarkable for the coolness and
equanimity of his temper. Amid all the dangers and successes of his
circumnavigation of the globe, he never expressed any strong emotion,
either of sorrow or joy, except when the Centurion hove in sight of
Tinian. He was a man of few words, and was even reckoned particularly
silent among English seamen, who have n