Duke of Portland wrote to Rockingham, and the King habitually spoke of him as "Malagrida" and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."[1] So notorious did this become, that one Dignam having given information of a plot to assassinate the King, and to seize the Tower, thought it worth his while to place the names of Shelburne and Sawbridge, the Lord Mayor of London, at the head of a list of twenty-five persons, whom he denounced. "For a few days it was believed, and the chief accused were watched, and the King was afraid to ride out; but the man being taken up for forging the sale of a place, the plot was found to be his forgery too."[2] Notwithstanding this exposure, Lord Suffolk, then Secretary of State, declared his story to have been "worthy of attention, plausible, and full of every appearance of truth"; and said in the House of Lords that he would not sit down without once more repeating, that "the conduct of those called the Opposition was detestable; and that though Dignam was an impostor, the Government had other proofs, and those of a nature not to admit a doubt, that the Opposition deserved that public detestation which they were notoriously known to be held in."[3]
At the moment when the fortunes of the Opposition were at their lowest ebb, it became known that Chatham was once more about to appear upon the scene. On May the 30th he broke his long silence, by moving an address to the Crown to put a stop to hostilities in America. This motion was supported by Shelburne, in a speech which the younger Pitt, who was present as a spectator, declared "one of the most interesting and forcible that he had ever heard, or even could imagine."[4] The chief features of it seem to have been a restatement of the dangers to be apprehended from foreign powers, and a fierce attack on the Archbishop of York, for having said in a sermon that resistance to the law could not under any circumstances be justified, a proposition against which
