Potter, whom Pitt had come to describe as 'one of the best friends I have in the world,' wrote to Pitt, ten days after Ryder's death, conveying the news from an inspired source that if Murray went on the bench Newcastle would invite Pitt to join the Government, for he could repair the loss in no other way. But he adds, shrewdly enough, that the Duke was evidently ignorant of his own strength, for if he had to rely on Lyttelton and Dupplin (then Joint Paymaster of the Forces) alone, though the debates would no doubt be shorter, he would not, such was the temper of the House, lose a single vote. He added that, in his judgment, the Opposition had not made themselves popular by their conduct, because of the fear of invasion. Hanover treaties and Hanover troops had become popular; opposition to them must be wrong 'when we are ready to be eat up by the French.'[327]
But these anticipations were premature, for the struggle with Murray lasted, as we have seen, from May till November. So that Pitt had leisure to squander on his improvements and to receive his eldest son John on John's entrance into the world. But his eye was vigilantly fixed on the distresses of the country. 'Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?' he writes to George Grenville (June 5, 1756). 'It is an inadequate and a selfish consolation, but it is a sensible one, to think that we share only in the common ruin, and not in the guilt of having left us exposed to the natural and necessary consequences of administration without ability or virtue.' Grenville, determined not to be undone, replies in a letter stuffed with Latin quotation. 'Distress,' rejoins Pitt (June 16, 1756), 'infinite distress seems to hem us in on all quarters. I am in most anxious impatience to have the affair in the Mediterranean cleared up. As yet nothing is clear but that the French are masters there, and that probably many an innocent and gallant man's honour and fortune is to be offered up as a scapegoat for the sins of the Administration.' In July he paid a visit at Stowe, and in August he was laid up at Hayes with 'a very awkward, uneasy, but not hurtful' malady.
He must have seen with poignant interest Frederick's fierce irruption into Saxony, but all seems absorbed in his anxiety for his wife and his overflowing delight at the birth of his son. This event occurred on October 10, at a moment when the ministerial crisis had become acute.
No one in fact was willing to face even an abject House of Commons with the loss of Minorca on his back. Newcastle was near the end of his tether. Murray had gone. Whether Chief Justice or not, he was determined to be out of the Ministry; and if disappointed of his just claim to the Bench he was not likely to face a storm on behalf of the Minister who had refused it. Murray had gone, Fox was going; for his chagrin was patent, and Newcastle 'treated him rather like an enemy whom he feared than as a minister whom he had chosen for his assistant.' He was no better used by the King. The Duke, moreover, was at war with the waxing power of Leicester House. With this Court indeed he managed to patch up a hollow peace at the expense of Fox; offending one Court and not appeasing the other. But that did not help him to an agent in the House of Commons.
And worse was still to come, disaster followed on disaster. To a nation freshly smarting with the fall of Minorca there came tidings of catastrophe from the East and the West. In June Calcutta had been captured by Surajah Dowlah, followed by the horrors of the Black Hole, which still linger in the proverbial dialect of this country. Then in August fell Oswego, the most important British fortress in North America. Situated on Lake Ontario it was a permanent menace to the French, for British command of that lake would mean the separation of Canada from Louisiana. Montcalm, a general of high merit, who has had the singular good fortune to leave a name consecrated by the common veneration of friend and foe, had arrived to take the command of the French forces in Canada. Two months after landing he marched on Oswego, and, investing it with a greatly superior force, soon compelled it to capitulate. Its garrison of 1400 men surrendered as prisoners of war.[328] A hundred pieces of artillery and great stores of ammunition fell into the hands of the French. The forts, three in number, and the vessels were burned. It was a real triumph for the French, and a proportionate disaster for their foes. 'Such a shocking affair has never found a place in English annals,' wrote one American officer. 'The loss is beyond account; but the dishonour done his Majesty's arms is infinitely greater.' 'Oswego,' wrote Horace Walpole, 'is of ten times more importance even than Minorca.'
Scarcely less consternation was caused in England, where the news arrived on September 30. People there were getting dazed with disaster, and the men who ruled became more and more abhorrent. Already, on September 2, Newcastle had written to the Chancellor that people were becoming outrageous in the North of England, and that a petition was being largely signed in Surrey demanding 'justice against persons however highly dignified or distinguished.' This, he adds drily, may mean you or me, or 'perhaps somebody more highly dignified and distinguished than either of us.'[329] Who could be found to bear such a burden of shame and ignominy, and affront the storm that threatened to burst at once in overwhelming popular fury?
Not Fox, undaunted though he might be. Like the condottiere that he was, he did not heed hard knocks provided the pay were good. But here he was defrauded of his deserts, of the promised confidence of the King and his Minister. For Newcastle had betrayed him to the last; the magpie cunning of that old caitiff paralysed every arm that might have defended him. When it came to the point he could not bring himself to part with his monopoly of patronage, and of power as he understood power. He was like a drowning miser with his treasure on him, who will not part with his gold to save his life. So the Duke preferred to sink with all his influence rather than take the chance of floating without it. First he set the King against Fox. The Duke had tried to appease Leicester House by getting the appointment of Groom of the Stole for Bute. The King, suspecting Bute's intimacy with the Princess, detested that fascinating courtier. So Newcastle, to divert from himself the King's wrath at having to make this nomination, told His Majesty that Fox made Bute's appointment a condition of his retaining the seals; and then without telling Fox that his name had thus been mentioned to the Sovereign, informed him that the King was exasperated against him.[330]
Then there arose the eternal question of patronage. Fox had been promised by the King himself that on becoming Secretary of State he should have the conduct of the House of Commons with all that that involved. But Newcastle could not bring himself to fulfil the royal pledges or his own. When the list of the Prince of Wales's household was published, Fox saw in it the names of eight or ten members of Parliament as to whom he had never been even consulted. Newcastle moreover, as Fox asserted, broke a solemn promise that Fox's nephew, Lord Digby, should be included. A still greater affront was that he told Fox that he destined a vacant seat at the Board of Trade for a person whom he was not at liberty to mention. More than this, he took occasion to remind Fox of a former offer to make way for Pitt if it were for the King's service, and Fox again readily agreed. All this took place on September 30.[331] Such an insulting and accumulated want of confidence between the leaders of the two Houses was not to be tolerated, and Fox wrote at once to Bubb that things were going ill. The final explosion was caused by the exclusion of Digby, which was notified to Fox on October 5. The King, said the Duke, refused this nomination peremptorily and bitterly, but had said that, if the Duke himself pressed it, he would yield to oblige the Duke. On receiving this letter, Fox wrote a furious letter to Stone, Newcastle's secretary. The draft of a letter commonly reveals much more of the writer's mind than the letter itself, and the draft of this is fortunately preserved.[332] 'I do not know,' wrote Fox, 'whether I am to imagine from hence that the negotiation with Mr. Pitt is far advanced, but I am told it is not begun. In these circumstances, dear Sir, I must beg you to stop it. I retract all good-humoured dealing. I may be turned out, and I suppose shall. But I will not be used like a dog without having given the least provocation (suppose I should say with the utmost merit to those who use me so) and be like that dog a spaniel. I do not consent that Mr. Pitt should have my place, and promise to be in good humour or even on any terms with those who give it him.'[333] Fox was in a blind fury, but sensibly expunged all this from the letter he sent. To Welbore Ellis, his confidant, he wrote: 'The King has carried his displeasure to me beyond common bounds, and I vow to God I don't guess the reason. The Duke of Newcastle, instead of growing better, has outdone himself, and show'd me the Prince's establishment on which eight members of the House of Commons are plac'd whose names he never mention'd to me, and he had the assurance to make a merit of shewing me the List after it was fix'd with the King. He has been Fool enough to ask my consent, and to intend to offer my place to Mr. Pitt without (as I believe) trying whether or no he will accept it. This makes it necessary for me to take a step in which my view is to get out of court and never come into it again.... If you think it worth while to get up very early to-morrow morning you may be at Holland House before I go to Lady Yarmouth, to desire and humbly advise H.M. to conclude the Treaty with Mr. Pitt, promising my assistance in a subaltern employment, and shewing the impossibility of my appearing and my determination not to appear in the H. of Commons as Secy. of State.'[334] While he was writing this, Newcastle was despatching a note giving way as to Digby's nomination,[335] with much the same effect as a cup of cold water poured with the best intentions on a burning city.
Whether with or without the companionship of Ellis, Fox went straight to Lady Yarmouth. She was out. Newcastle had already sent her a note enclosing Fox's resignation, and assuring her that Fox was bringing it to her for transmission to the King.[336] When Fox found her, later in the day, and handed her his paper, she denied any idea of Pitt ever having been suggested to the King, but besought him to reconsider his determination. 'Monsieur Fox, vous êtes trop honnête homme pour quitter à présent. S'il y avait quatre ou cinq mois avant que le Parlement s'assemble; à la fin de la session vous ferez ce que vous voudrez, mais à présent de jeter tout en confusion! Regardez à la position des affaires. Non, je n'excuse pas le Duc de Newcastle; c'est dur, c'est pénible, mais quand vous aurez pensé un peu au Roi, à la patrie, vous continuerez cette session,' perhaps the only articulate utterance of Lady Yarmouth that we possess.[337] Failing in this, she begged at least that Granville might hand the resignation to the King instead of herself. Fox agreed to this.[338]
Fox's note to Newcastle was terse and sombre: