me sincere pleasure," wrote Lord John Russell on the 12th of May, in
answer to a letter thanking him for the conduct of his Administration,
"that the last act of the Government has been so gratifying to you. Your
services to your country are recorded among those of the most brilliant
of a war signalised by heroic achievements. I will lay before her
Majesty the expression of your gratitude, and I can assure you that the
Queen has sanctioned with the greatest satisfaction the advice of her
ministers."

On the 25th of May--the order being dated the 22nd--Lord Dundonald was
gazetted as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath; and this act
of grace was rendered more graceful by the personal interest shown by
Prince Albert, who, as Grand Master of the Order, dispensed with the
customary formalities and delays, and, on the following morning, caused
a warrant to be sent to him, in order that he might wear the cross at
the birthday drawing-room, which he attended by her Majesty's command on
the 27th of May. Thus another step was made in the way of retribution
for the injuries inflicted on him in 1814 and in the ensuing years.

"To-day," he wrote on the 12th of July, "there was a grand muster at the
palace of all the Knights Grand Crosses, and many inferior Crosses, and
I was installed. Lord Ellenborough was one of my sponsors, and the Duke
of Wellington shook hands with me, and expressed his satisfaction at my
restoration to the Order. I am glad to tell you that the ceremony of
knighting, of which I was afraid, was not resorted to; so my knightship
dates back to the 27th of April, 1809."

In another effort to obtain full justice for himself, however, he was
unsuccessful. The great expenses that sprang out of his long-continued
scientific and mechanical pursuits had absorbed all his scanty sources
of income, and he forcibly urged that in accordance with the precedent
furnished by a similar grant to Sir Robert Wilson, in 1832, he was
entitled to the arrears of pay due to him for the seventeen years during
which he had been kept out of his position in the British navy. But his
request was refused; and the heavy pecuniary loss, as well as other and
much heavier deprivations, consequent on a persecution that has been
since admitted to have been wholly undeserved, has never been
compensated.[20]

[20] Part of a letter which Lord Dundonald received on this subject four
years afterwards from Mr. Joseph Hume, though quoted