Fox, and Burke, who was treated with strange neglect by his friends, Paymaster-General. Lloyd Kenyon, the friend and once the pupil of Dunning, was appointed Attorney-General, and John Lee Solicitor-General. The Duke of Portland went to Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant, with Colonel Richard Fitzpatrick, the friend of Fox and the brother-in-law of Shelburne, as his Secretary. Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Richmond were appointed Knights of the Garter. It had been the wish of Shelburne to have given high office to Pitt, and at one moment it was all but so settled. On the 28th of March, Lady Chatham writing to Shelburne to congratulate him on his return to office, begs leave "to add a few words to express her own private happiness on the high honour done her son William, which increases that enjoyed by her on the propitious change that has taken place."[1] It would appear likely however that Rockingham and his friends, already incensed at the promotion of Dunning,[2] succeeded in keeping Pitt out of the Cabinet. An inferior office he had pledged himself not to take, and he refused the Vice-Treasurership of Ireland, which was offered him.[3]
Thus was formed the second Administration of Lord Rockingham. "Thank God, Thank God," Horace Walpole writes to Mason on the 21st of March. "What remains of this country and constitution may be saved. No art or industry [but] has been employed to divide and break the Opposition. Lord Shelburne has resisted nobly and wisely, and they triumph together."[4] On entering office the new Prime Minister was assured by the King, "that he would always receive his recommendations and advice, and the more so when they were concerted with Lord Shelburne and his other servants in the departments to which they related." The King also told his Whig advisers "that the same principle which induced Lord Shelburne originally to give the advice of taking in Lord
- ↑ Lady Chatham to Shelburne, March 28th, 1782.
- ↑ Memorials of Fox, i. 293. Wraxall, Memoirs, iii. 13. Memoranda of the Duke of Leeds, 65, quoted by Dr. Felix Solomon in his Life of Pitt, 67, note.
- ↑ March 8th, 1782. Parliamentary History, xxii. 1149. Stanhope, History of England, ed. 1853, vii. 214. Life of Pitt, i. 72.
- ↑ Walpole Correspondence, viii. 184.
