Stone and Scott retained their posts, but it was not found easy to replace the men who had resigned. Ministers desired to appoint as Preceptor Dr. Johnson,[52] the new Bishop of Gloucester, but the Whigs were so bitterly opposed to the nomination, and had the support of the Archbishop's objections, that eventually Dr. Thomas[53] was given the office. "It was still more difficult to accommodate themselves with a Governor," Walpole has recorded. "The post was at once too exalted, and they had declared it too unsubstantial, to leave it easy to find a man who could fill the honour, and digest the dishonour of it."[54] Overtures were made in several quarters but without success, until at last, at the request of the King, Lord Waldegrave[55] consented to accept the responsibility. This he did only after "repeated assurances of the submission and tractability of Stone," and then with great reluctance, for he was a man of pleasure rather than of affairs, and reluctant to be embroiled in intrigue. "If I dared," he said to a friend, "I would make this excuse to the King, 'Sir, I am too young to govern, and too old to be governed.'" Even this appointment was censured by the Whigs, for, though Waldegrave was a man of great common sense and undoubted honour, it was objected that "his grandmother was a daughter of King James; his family were all Papists, and his father had been but the first convert"! [52] James Johnson (1705-1774), Bishop of Gloucester, 1752; Bishop of Worcester, 1759. [53] John Thomas (1696-1781), successively Bishop of Peterborough (1747), Salisbury (1757) and Winchester (1761). [54] Walpole: _Memoirs of King George II_. [55] James, second Earl Waldegrave (1715-1763), married Maria Walpole, a natural daughter of Sir Edward Walpole by Mrs. Clement, a milliner. After the death of her first husband the Countess secretly married on September 6, 1766, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and the union was publicly announced when the Royal Marriage Act was introduced into Parliament. The refusal of Lord Harcourt to discuss his complaints with any one but the King was doubtless due to the fact that he traced the objectionable doctrines taught to his pupil to Lord Bute.[56] In his earlier years Bute had taken no part nor, indeed, shown any interest in politics. In 1723, at the age of twenty, he had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father; had married Mary, only daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and so came into possession of the Wortley estates; and, though in 1737 elected representative peer of Scotland, had spent most of his time on his estates, occupying himself with the theoretical and practical study of agriculture and architecture. [56] John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1715-1792).