“Parliament will be prorogued to-day and dissolved to-morrow. The latter operation has been in some danger of delay by a curious manœuvre, that of stealing the Great Seal last night from the Chancellor’s, but we shall have a new one ready in time. I send you a copy of the Speech which will be made in two hours from the Throne. You may speak of it in the past tense, instead of in the _future_.... I am told Sir Robert Hildyard is the right candidate for the county. You must take care to keep all our friends together, and to _tear the enemy to pieces_. I set out this evening for Cambridge, where I expect, notwithstanding your boding, to find everything favourable. I am sure, however, to find a retreat at Bath. “Ever faithfully yours, “W. PITT.” Though Pitt had the “good things” to give away he did not escape sarcasm: thus it was suggested--it is said by Paley, who was then at Cambridge--as a fitting text for a university sermon, “There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?” “The author of this pleasantry,” declares Stanhope, “did not allow for the public temper of the time; in most cases the electors voted without views of personal interest; in some cases they voted even against views of personal interest.” Pitt was supported by Lord Euston, the heir of the Duke of Grafton, and between them they defeated the late members, the Hon. John Townshend, and James Mansfield, both members of the coalition ministry, the former as lord of the admiralty, the latter as solicitor-general. After a keen contest, Pitt and Lord Euston were returned, Pitt at the head of the poll. It was a marked triumph, and exercised an influence elsewhere; nor was it a fleeting victory or a temporary connection, for Pitt continued to represent the university during the remainder of his life. Pitt, now, as he called himself, “a hardened electioneerer,” entered into the spirit of the warfare, and carried his forces into the strongholds of the Whig estates:-- “But,” writes Earl Stanhope, “of all the contests of this period the most important in that point of view was for the county of York. That great county, not yet at election times severed into Ridings, had been under the sway of the Whig Houses. Bolton Abbey, Castle Howard, and Wentworth Park had claimed the right to dictate at the hustings.”