The new Cabinet consisted of the following ministers:—
| Marquis of Rockingham | First Lord of the Treasury. |
| Lord Thurlow, to continue Lord Chancellor. | |
| Earl of Shelburne } | Principal Secretaries of State. |
| Charles James Fox } | |
| Lord J. Cavendish | Chancellor of the Exchequer. |
| Admiral Lord Keppel | First Lord of the Admiralty. |
| Duke of Grafton | Lord Privy Seal. |
| Lord Camden | President of the Council. |
| Duke of Richmond | Master-General of the Ordnance. |
| General Conway | Commander-in-Chief. |
| John Dunning (Lord Ashburton) | Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. |
[13] Lady Elizabeth Hervey, daughter of Frederick, Earl of Bristol, and Bishop of Derry, married, in 1776, John Thomas Foster. Her father, says Walpole to Mann in December, 1783, though a rich man, allowed her to be governess to a natural daughter of the Duke of Devonshire. Lady Elizabeth Foster, writes Miss Burney (Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay, vol. v. p. 225), "has the character of being so alluring, that Mrs. Holroyd told me it was the opinion of Mr. Gibbon no man could withstand her, and that, if she chose to beckon the Lord Chancellor from his woolsack, in full sight of the world, he could not resist obedience." Lady Elizabeth, who, in October, 1809, married as her second husband William, fifth Duke of Devonshire, died March 30, 1824.
[14] On April 12, 1782, Admiral Sir George Rodney "broke the line," and defeated the French under the Comte de Grasse in the West Indies, the French Admiral and his flagship the Ville de Paris, the largest ship afloat and the present of the city of Paris to Louis XVI., being taken. "The late Ministry are thus robbed of a victory that ought to have been theirs; but the mob do not look into the almanac" (Walpole to Sir H. Mann, May 18, 1782).
[15] Rodney was superseded by Admiral Pigot, who was one of the Lords of the Admiralty in the new administration.
[16] The Marquis of Rockingham died July 2, 1782, aged fifty-two.
[17] The poem to which Gibbon alludes is the Essay on Epic Poetry in five Epistles to the Rev. Mr. Mason (London, 1782). Hayley's mother was Mary Yates (1718-1775), who married Thomas Hayley in 1740, and died in 1775. The lines to which Gibbon alludes occur in the fourth epistle (ll. 439 to end).
"Nature, who deck'd thy form with Beauty's flowers,
Exhausted on thy soul her finer powers;
Taught it with all her energy to feel