Pitt found it was no easy task at this time to form a ministry, for, as Lord Northington said, "There are four parties, Butes, Bedfords, Rockinghams, Chathams, and we (the last) are the weakest of the four."[58] In these circumstances, Pitt was desirous to retain as many of the members of the last administration as could be induced to shift their allegiance; and in this matter he was assisted by Lord Rockingham, who behaved very well under great provocation. "Indignant as Lord Rockingham naturally felt at the treatment he has received at Lord Chatham's hands ... as Lord Chatham professed to be actuated by the same political principles as the late Government, Lord Rockingham desired such of his followers as the new Premier did not remove to remain at their posts."[59] Accordingly, the Duke of Portland continued Lord Chamberlain, and Sir Charles Saunders remained at the Board of Admiralty. Conway, who retained his Secretaryship of State, had, however, anticipated the pronouncement of his late chief, for when the King told him he had sent for Pitt, "Sir," said he, "I am glad of it. I always thought it the best thing your Majesty could do. I wish it may answer." No wonder the Duke of Richmond wrote bitterly to Lord Rockingham: "If Mr. Conway's sentiments get among our friends, it will be a race among them who shall go first to Mr. Pitt."[60] Lord Camden succeeded Lord Northington as Lord Chancellor, and the latter was solaced with the office of President of the Council, and the reversion for two lives of a lucrative sinecure situation. The Duke of Grafton became First Lord of the Treasury, the Earl of Shelbourne a Secretary of State, Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer; while Pitt, whose ill-health prevented him from undertaking departmental duties, contented himself with the easy post of Lord Privy Seal, and went to the Upper House. Such was the "Mosaic Ministry," which Burke, in a speech on American taxation, described as "a chequered and speckled administration; a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; King's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies;—that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on."
As soon as it became known that the King had sent for Pitt there was immense enthusiasm, and when it was announced that the Great Commoner had consented to undertake the government there was great joy, especially in the City, where Pitt's popularity was boundless. The Corporation at once arranged to present him with an Address and to invite him as the guest of honour to a banquet at the Guildhall, and orders were given for a general illumination. The lamps were actually affixed to the Monument, when the news came that the Great Commoner had, on July 30, accepted an earldom, and the orders for the Address, banquet, and illumination were hastily countermanded. There was, of course, no reason why Pitt should not go to the House of Lords if he desired, for he had earned a peerage, if ever a man had; but it was rumoured—and, such is the fickleness of the people, everywhere believed—that the Court had bought him with this honour, and, as Walpole said, "that fatal title blasted all the affection which his country had borne to him, and which he had deserved so well."[61] "The City have brought in their verdict of felo de se against William, Earl of Chatham," wrote Sir Robert Wilmot;[62] and certainly, while the name of Pitt had been one to conjure with, the name of Chatham was found to have no charm.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the decline in public favour of Chatham, the weakness of the "Mosaic Ministry" and the failure of all attempts to strengthen it,[63] was the King's opportunity. "I know the Earl of Chatham will zealously give his aid towards destroying all party distinctions, and restoring that subordination to government which alone can preserve that inestimable blessing, Liberty, from degenerating into licentiousness," so George III wrote to the new Prime Minister. It is clear that the King was pursuing his plan to be himself the real ruler of the country, and he had certainly succeeded already to a considerable degree. By his machinations, he had taken the government out of the hands of the great Whig family, and had divided that party into several hostile sections. This made more practicable his desire to extinguish party, but he was confronted with the difficulty that, even in an age that was not distinguished for public honesty, public men did not transfer their allegiance from one leader to another as readily as the sovereign desired.
A king, however, has no difficulty in securing adherents, and George collected such as could be induced to rally round his standard into a body that called itself the King's Friends. "Ministers are no longer the public servants of the state, but the private domestics of the sovereign," Junius thundered. "One particular class of men are permitted to call themselves the King's Friends, as if the body of the people were the King's enemies: or as if his Majesty looked for a resource or consolation in the attachment of a few favourites against the general contempt and detestation of his subjects. Edward and Richard the Second made the same distinction between the collective body of the people and a contemptible party who surrounded the throne." Unfortunately for George, all reputable parliamentarians belonged to some party already existing, and, as Sir George Trevelyan has put it admirably, "The only recruiting ground that was left open to his Majesty's operations lay among the waifs and strays of politics; among the disappointed, the discontented and the discredited; among those whom Chatham would not stoop to notice, and Newcastle had not cared to buy; and out of such material as this was gradually organized a band of camp-followers promoted in the ranks, at the head of which no decent leader would have been seen marching through the lobby."[64]
The immediate entourage of the Court was, as we have seen, composed of quiet, respectable persons; and the King, who realized that the majority of those politicians who placed themselves at his disposal did so entirely for the sake of the emoluments and honours that majesty could bestow, had little or no personal intercourse with his adherents. Indeed, because of this want of personal relation Lord Carlisle declined the post of Lord of the Bedchamber. "I have no reason to expect, however long I may continue, that either by assiduity, attention and respect, I can ever succeed to any kind of confidence with my master," he wrote. "That familiarity which subsists between other princes, and those of their servants whose attachment they are convinced of, being excluded from our Court by the King's living so much in private, damps all views of ambition which might arise from that quarter." Lord Winchelsea, indeed, did accept such a post, but reluctantly and in a manner that irritated the King, who wrote to Lord North. "I cannot say I am quite edified at Lord Winchelsea's not in reality liking his appointment, though out of duty he accepts of it. I remember the time when an ambassador would have thought that honour a reward for ability and diligence during a long foreign mission. However, it will teach me one lesson, never again to offer it, but to wait for applications."[65]
The majority, however, were content with the loaves and fishes, and probably had no desire to be on intimate terms with the monarch, except for such benefit as might accrue from such friendship. This was particularly fortunate, for while the King was highly respectable and moral, the high officials of his Court included some of the most desperate roués of the day and might have furnished examples for a preacher whose text was, "The wicked flourish like a green bay tree." The Earl of March,[66] Wordsworth's "Degenerate Douglas," and an avowed profligate, was a Lord of the Bedchamber for twenty-eight years under eleven successive Prime Ministers; another Lord was, after a time, according to Trevelyan, judged too bad to remain even in the Bedchamber, and was accordingly packed off to Virginia as its Governor; and the Keeper of the Great Wardrobe was Lord le Despencer, one of the notorious Medmenham monks. More respectable morally, however, were the King's spokesmen in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Lord Eglington,[67] and "Mungo" Dyson.[68] The latter, however, was a political "Vicar of Bray" and had lost the regard of all reputable statesmen by the facility with which he changed his opinions whenever it was to his advantage to do so. When he entered Parliament he was supposed to hold anti-monarchical views, but he was at the time in the pay of Bute; later he posed as a supporter of Grenville, but deserted him for the King. It was shortly after this desertion that he assumed a bag-wig instead of a tye-wig, whereupon Lord Gower cleverly remarked that the change was doubtless made "because no tie would hold him."[69] Such was the material with which a King, who prided himself upon his honesty and morality, chose to work.
"'Tis very true, my sov'reign King,
My skill may weel be doubted;
But facts are chiels that winna ding,
And downa be disputed.
Your royal nest, beneath your wing,
Is e'en right reft an' clouted;
And now the third part of the string,
An' less, will gang about it
Than did ae day.
[Pg 56]
Far be't frae me that I aspire
To blame your legislation,
Or say, ye wisdom want, or fire,
To rule this mighty nation!
But, faith! I muckle doubt, my Sire,
Ye've trusted ministration
To chaps, wha, in a barn or byre,
Wad better fill'd their station
Than courts yon day."[70]
For some time before he resumed office Lord Chatham had been far from well, and he was in no condition to conduct the delicate negotiations incidental to the formation of a ministry: the conferences in which he had to take part, he told his wife, heated his blood and accelerated his pulse. Soon after his administration came into power, ill-health drove him into seclusion at Bath. "Lord Chatham is here with more equipage, household and retinue, than most of the old patriarchs used to travel with in ancient days," Gilly Williams wrote to George Selwyn. "He comes nowhere but to the Pump Room. There he makes a short essay and retires." The King was much disturbed at this unexpected defection of his principal supporter, and great was the discomfiture of the ministers at being deprived of their leader. It came as a great relief to sovereign and colleagues alike when, after a considerable interval the news came that the Earl had fixed a day for his arrival in London.