The Queen was taken ill while I was speaking, so that I am come away quite uncertain of the resolutions to be taken, nor shall I for some days have any opportunity of knowing more. I was asked what grounds I had to believe the Treasury was not to be seized as well as other offices. This was dark in your report[1] so that I could make little of it."[2]
While the negotiations were thus at a stand-still, Egremont suddenly died on the 21st of August. It was now hoped that Pitt would consent to fill the vacant office. Except Grenville, every one wished it.[3]
Bute and Pitt accordingly had a meeting on the 25th of August at the house of the latter, and their conversation was mutually so satisfactory that it was followed by an interview between Pitt and the King on the 26th.[4] The impression left on the mind of Shelburne was that "the negotiation thus entered on carried through the whole of it such shocking marks of insincerity, that if it had taken another turn than it did, it must have laid on the shoulders of Pitt a weight of a most irksome nature on account of the peculiar circumstances attending it."[5]
There is every reason to suppose that Pitt had formed the same opinion. "The King," says Walpole, "had not only been revolted at Mr. Pitt's terms, though without owning it, but Mr. Pitt had the sagacity to discover His Majesty's repugnance, and therefore not only carried on the farce of returning to Court the next day, but was so dexterous as to see the Duke of Newcastle, with whose interests he had by no means clogged his first demands, and assuring his Grace of his zeal for his service, went
- ↑ This report is not extant. It is however clear, that Pitt from the beginning of the negotiation intended Temple to be First Lord of the Treasury. Shelburne to Bute, August 14th, 1763.
- ↑ Bute to Shelburne, August 16th.
- ↑ Walpole says (Correspondence, iv. 108) that Shelburne wanted to be Secretary of State himself. If Pitt had filled the vacancy, Shelburne might have succeeded Halifax.
- ↑ Hardwicke to Royston, September 4th, 1763.
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, August 30th, 1763. "It was the interest of Bute to see Pitt at the head of affairs; for Pitt alone had opposed him as a Minister without animosity as a man. They who had sided with him when in power, now so dreaded to share his unpopularity, that they had made a parade of proscribing him, and wished not only to deprive him of influence, but to exile him from the Court and from Westminster. He therefore desired and long continued to desire to see Pitt in office."—Bancroft, v. 142.
