Scott's reputation was now rising year by year, in both Parliament and his profession; and Lord Mansfield's resignation, in 1788, of the chief-justiceship of the King's Bench making a general move in the higher orders of the bar, Scott was appointed solicitor-general, Kenyon being appointed to the chief-justiceship, and the attorney-general, Arden, succeeding to the Rolls. On this occasion he was knighted. A melancholy event soon gave him the most public opportunity for the display of his official faculties. In the autumn of 1788, the king was attacked with disorder of the mind, and the great question of the regency necessarily came before Parliament. The Whigs, who regarded the Prince of Wales as their dependent, if not as their dupe, insisted on his succession to the unlimited prerogatives of the sovereign; the Tories insisted, on the other hand, that Parliament alone had a right to confer the regency and to assign its powers, though they admitted that the choice, in the present instance, ought to fall upon the Prince of Wales. A question of this importance naturally brought out all the ability on both sides. Pitt and the solicitor-general took the lead on the side of limitation, and the prince ultimately accepted the regency on their terms. It became unnecessary, however; for, while the bill was in the House of Lords, a communication was made by the chancellor, that the king's health was in a favourable state. His majesty was able to return to business in March. Lord Thurlow had been universally charged with carrying on an intrigue with the Opposition, for the purpose of continuing in office under the regency. Lord Eldon's belief is introduced against that charge; but there can be no doubt whatever that the charge was universally rumoured at the time; that anecdotes confirmatory of the fact were told in every direction; that no known attempt was ever made to answer them; and that, from the period of the regency, an alienation arose, which finally determined his dismissal by the minister. The well-known boast of the chancellor's loyalty to the incapacitated king, which produced such animadversion in the House, and such burlesque out of it--Burke's ridicule of his official sensibilities, "the iron tears down Pluto's cheeks," were all founded on the public belief of this intrigue. And it is certainly no answer, at the end of half a century of uncontradicted opinion, to say that no formal accusation on the subject was made on the king's recovery, when the whole subject of the regency had become alike distasteful to both sides of the House--to Ministers, from delicacy to the king; and to Opposition, from a sense of failure.