On the 5th of July the King sent likewise for Conway to Richmond, and showed him all Lord Chatham’s letters.[23] His Majesty had sent for the latter; Lady Chatham wrote to the King that it was impossible for her lord even to _write_. In the evening the King had offered to go to him. Lord Chatham himself then _wrote_ to decline that honour, pleading his health was worse than ever. His Majesty then asked Conway’s advice. The latter proposed taking Lord Rockingham’s party. The King listened, but asking what the Marquis himself would expect, and Conway replying, the Treasury, the King seemed surprised, protested he had heard no mention of that, and asked, what was then to become of the Duke of Grafton? There seemed some mystery in this behaviour. Either Grafton had kept his eye on the Treasury, or the King had suffered him to allure Lord Rockingham with false hopes. The King and the Duke had misunderstood or deceived each other; which was the more likely, the characters of both will tell. One point, however, was clear, that the King had had the shrewdness to penetrate the Duke’s character earlier than anybody else had, and had found that of all the various ministers he had tried, no man would be more pliant in the closet or give him less trouble. In truth the Duke was the reverse of Grenville; acquiesced in whatever his Majesty proposed, and ever was as ready to leave the room as the King was desirous he should. He was just the minister whose facility and indolence suited the views of the King, the Princess, and the Favourite.
His Majesty next commissioned Conway to treat with Lord Rockingham, with _no_ restrictions but that the Duke of Grafton and the Chancellor should be retained in the Administration, though the Treasury should be ceded to Rockingham. Whether the King forgot having allowed this last condition to be offered, or hoped to evade it, the following negotiations made it plain that he had never intended to fulfil it, if he could form any system without being reduced to that necessity. Two reasons combined to rivet in his Majesty an aversion to having Lord Rockingham for his First Minister; the one general and permanent, the other temporary: the Marquis and his party had and did persist in the exclusion of Lord Bute and his connection. If possessed of power at the eve of a new Parliament, he would be able to influence the elections to the exclusion of that connection. The King was not desirous of giving himself a minister who would thus be master both of him and the Parliament.