CHAPTER XV
"THE KING'S FRIENDS"
"Mr. Pitt," wrote the King on July 7, 1766, "your very dutiful and handsome conduct the last summer makes me desirous of having your thoughts how an able and dignified ministry may be formed. I desire, therefore, you will come for this salutary purpose, to town." "Penetrated with the deepest sense of your Majesty's goodness to me, and with a heart overflowing with duty and zeal for the honour and happiness of the most gracious and benign sovereign," Pitt replied, "I shall hasten to London as fast as I possibly can; wishing that I could change infirmity into wings of expedition, the sooner to be permitted the high honour to lay at your Majesty's feet the poor but sincere offering of my little services."
Photo by Emery Walker. From a portrait by Richard Brompton
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM
Close on the heels of his letter, Pitt came to London, arriving on July 11, and seeing the King at Richmond on the following day, when he undertook to form a cabinet. The relations between Pitt and Lord Temple were not so friendly as before, for Pitt was angry with his brother-in-law for having opposed the repeal of the Stamp Act, and the Earl was displeased that Pitt had not thrown in his lot with the family league formed at Stowe. Notwithstanding, Pitt offered the Treasury to Temple, who was not satisfied by this proposal, which he regarded as inadequate, and suggested an equal division of power and the right to nominate half the cabinet, on which terms he was willing to abandon his brother, George Grenville. Pitt, of course, declined to consider such a proposal, and thereupon Temple declined, as he wrote to Lady Chatham, "to be stuck into a ministry as a great cypher at the head of the Treasury, surrounded with other cyphers by Mr. Pitt."[57] This refusal was the end of the political career of Earl Temple, who did not realise that it was only as an adherent of William Pitt he was of importance in the State.