Mr Balfour's Poodle(50)

It fell to Knollys to give the decisive advice on this point (he had got the King up to London by November 16 for an audience to Asquith and Crewe that afternoon). In Sir Harold Nicolson’s words, ‘Lord Knollys assured him that Mr. Balfour would in any event decline to form an administration.’i This was curiously firm advice, for it was far from certain that Balfour would not agree to form a Government, and no one had better reason to know this than Lord Knollys. On April 29 he had been present at a secret meeting at Lambeth Palace, convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury and attended also by Balfour and Lord Esher.1 His own record of the meeting says, ‘Mr. Balfour made it quite clear that he would be prepared to form a Government to prevent the King being put in the position contemplated by the. demand for the creation of peers.’j Knollys communicated the substance of this talk to King Edward on the day before his death, but did not subsequently pass the information on to King George. This was not perhaps surprising, for it may well be that no occasion to do so arose, either at the time of the change of reign or in the following months. But what is remarkable is that when specifically asked about the point in November, Knollys should have given advice based on facts directly contrary to those which he had recorded in a minute six and a half months previously.

The decisive nature of this advice cannot be doubted. The King gave way to the Cabinet’s demand at this interview with Asquith and Crewe on the afternoon of November 16.1 That night he wrote his own version of what had transpired:

‘After a long talk’ he recorded, ‘I agreed most reluctantly to give the Cabinet a secret understanding that in the event of the Government being returned with a majority at the General Election, I should use my Prerogative to make Peers if asked for. I disliked having to do this very much, but agreed that this was the only alternative to the Cabinet resigning, which at this moment would be disastrous (my italics). Francis (Knollys) strongly urged me to take this course and I think his advice is generally very sound. I only trust and pray he is right this time.’k

Asquith, speaking of the occasion in the House of Commons nine months later,2 used the following carefully chosen words: ‘His Majesty, after careful consideration of all the circumstances past and present, and after discussing the matter in all its bearings with myself and my noble friend and colleague, Lord Crewe, felt that he had no alternative but to assent to the advice of the Cabinet.’ (my italics.)

The implication of both statements is that, had he thought Balfour’s attitude to be different, the King might have shifted his own position. And this is borne out by a piece of subsequent history related by Sir Harold Nicolson. Knollys gave up his appointment in 1913, the King finding the arrangement of joint private secretaries unsatisfactory. A few months afterwards King George saw for the first time the minute of the meeting of April 29, and dictated the following short note upon it: ‘It was not until late in the year 1913 that the foregoing letters and memoranda came into my possession. The knowledge of their contents would, undoubtedly, have had an important bearing and influence with regard to Mr. Asquith’s request for guarantees on November 16, 1910.’l

Sir Harold Nicolson thinks that Lord Knollys, despite what it is difficult to regard as other than a deliberate act of concealment, was substantially right in the information he gave the King, because Balfour had changed his mind by November. The evidence he cites in support of this is a letter from Balfour to Lansdowne, dated December 27. In this letter Balfour wrote: ‘I do not believe, however, as at present advised, that it would be fair to the King to suggest that he will better his position by attempting, under present circumstances, to change his Government.’ m But this is no evidence at all. By December 27 the second 1910 election had occurred and confirmed the result of the first. It was therefore obvious, and this point is made by Balfour elsewhere in the letter, that a third dissolution was unthinkable. In November, as in April, the situation was quite different. A second election seemed inevitable, and the point at issue was whether it should be fought with a majority Liberal Government in office, choosing the ground to confirm its position, or with a minority union  ist Government, choosing the ground to achieve a majority. By the end of December a change of Government was possible only if the new Government could carry on with the existing Parliament, and this the union  ists manifestly could not do.

This does not mean that Balfour was certainly still willing to form a Government in November. Indeed his increasing apprehension of the political future makes it quite likely that he was less ready for a rash venture then than he had been in April. But it does mean that we have no evidence that this was so, and that it is improbable that Lord Knollys had any either. What Knollys appears therefore to have done was not merely to have suppressed a piece of information because a better piece came to hand and he did not wish to confuse the King, but to suppress the best piece which he had because he was so convinced that the King should accept the advice of the Cabinet that he was unwilling to advance any facts which might turn his mind the other way.