I called at Devonshire House in the morning, and there found Princess Lieven very eloquent and very angry about the Terceira business, which certainly requires explanation. She is very hostile to the Duke, which is natural, as he is anti-Russian, and they have never got over their old quarrel. Saldanha got up a _coup de théâtre_ on board his ship. When Walpole fired on him a man was killed, and when the English officer came on board he had the corpse stretched out and covered by a cloak, which was suddenly withdrawn, and Saldanha said, 'Voilà un fidèle sujet de la Reine, qui a toujours été loyal, assassiné,' &c.
Went from thence to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who declaimed against O'Connell and wants to have a provision in the Bill to prevent his sitting for Clare, which I trust is only her folly, and that there is no chance of such a thing. The Duke came in while I was there. He said he had no doubt he should do very well in the House of Lords, but up to that time he could only (that he knew of for certain) reduce the majority of last year to twenty. He did not count bishops, of whom he said he knew nothing, but the three Irish bishops would vote with him. There were many others he did not doubt would, but he could only count upon that number. He held some proxies, which he said he would not make use of, such as Lord Strangford's, as he could not hear from him in time, and would not use anybody's proxy for this question who had voted against it before. I told him how peevish the Duke of Rutland, and Beaufort, and others of the High Tories were, but he only laughed. In the evening Fitzgerald told me that the Convocation at Oxford had accepted Peel's resignation of his seat for the University, but left the time to him. It seems to me that this affair was mismanaged. In the first instance Peel wrote to the Dean of Christ Church, but he and Lloyd[2] agreed that he ought to write to the Vice-Chancellor, which he did. The Vice-Chancellor did not read his letter till after they had voted the address to Parliament by three to one, after which it was difficult for them to express anything but disapprobation of Peel's conduct; whereas if the Vice-Chancellor had read it first, probably the petition would not have been carried, or at any rate not by so large a majority. He had better have carried his Bill through and then resigned, when I have no doubt he would have been re-elected; very likely he may be as it is.