Parliament was dissolved on the 15th of August, 1834, and by that time his party, the king, and everybody else, had grown pretty well tired of Lord Chancellor Brougham. His head would seem to have been almost turned by his success; for he employed the recess which followed the prorogation in making a sort of royal progress through Scotland, parading the Great Seal on his way, to the great disgust of the king, who seriously thought he had taken leave of his senses, and protested against it being carried across the border. In the course of this strange progress he reached Inverness in the beginning of September, 1834, and was presented by the magistrates with the freedom of their city. In returning thanks for this honour, Lord Brougham said he was conscious "that it was not owing to any personal merits that he had received this mark of distinction at their hands. First of all he owed it to the circumstance that he had the honour of serving a monarch who lived in the hearts of his subjects. He had enjoyed the honour of serving that prince for nearly four years, and during that time he had experienced from his Majesty only one series of gracious condescension, confidence, and favour. To find that he lived in the hearts of his loyal subjects in the ancient and important capital of the Highlands, as it had afforded him (Lord Brougham) only pure and unmixed satisfaction, would, he was confident, be so received by his Majesty, when he (Lord Brougham) told him, _as he would by that night's post_ (cheers), of the gratifying circumstances."[120] So far, however, from being gratified, the bluff sailor king was tremendously annoyed. These fulsome adulations, and the ridiculous manner in which his eccentric and embarrassing Chancellor tortured any personal attention to himself (Brougham) into a personal compliment to his royal master, thoroughly disgusted him. For some weeks previously _The Times_ had attacked the eccentric Chancellor with a constancy and vigour of satire quite unexampled; the tide of ridicule was swelled by contributions from the London and provincial press; Brougham made some foolish speeches at Aberdeen and Dundee, which excited the laughter of his enemies and the alarm of his friends. "Those who are charitably disposed," remarks the unfriendly Greville, "express their humane conviction that he is mad, and it probably is not very remote from the truth."