the monarch's kindness, "I had but too much reason to expect your Majesty's displeasure. I did not come prepared for this exceeding goodness; pardon me, Sire, it overpowers, oppresses me." Then, the chroniclers agree, the Great Commoner burst into tears, but before he left the royal presence he had accepted a peerage for his wife and a pension for two lives of £3,000 a year. "It is difficult to say," Walpole remarked, "which exulted most on the occasion, France, Spain, or Lord Bute, for Mr. Pitt was the common enemy of all three." [154] John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford (1710-1771). The behaviour of Pitt's colleagues was resented by the public, and the Corporation of London passed a vote of thanks to the ex-minister, while many who had seen an evil omen in the falling of a large jewel from the crown during the coronation, now declared that their fear had been fulfilled. "When first, portentous, it was known, Great George had jostled from his crown The brightest diamond there; The omen-mongers, one and all, Foretold some mischief must befall, Some loss beyond compare. Some fear this gem is Hanover, Whilst others wish to God it were; Each strives the nail to hit One guesses that, another this, All mighty wise, yet all amiss; For, ah! who thought of Pitt?"[155] [155] Another verse, with a similar allusion, is given in _The New Foundling Hospital for Wit_. "Ne'er yet in vain did Heaven its omen send; Some dreadful ills unusual signs portend! When Pitt resign'd, a nation's tears will own, 'Then fell the brightest jewel in the crown.'" On the other hand, caricaturists and pamphleteers in the pay of Bute exulted in cartoon and verse at the downfall of the Great Commoner, and poured scorn on him for accepting favours at the King's hands. "Three thousand a year's no contemptible thing To accept from the hands of a patriot king, (With thanks, to the bargain, for service and merit), Which he, wife and son, all three shall inherit With limited honours to _her_ and _her heirs_. So farewell to old England. _Adieu to all cares._"[156] [156] Besides the lampooners attached to each side there were various unscrupulous journalistic free-lances, whose object was only to make money, which they extorted by a method since imitated by certain editors of low-class society and financial papers. Thus a writer went with a column of panegyric and a column of condemnation of the character of Alderman Beckford, and attempted to levy blackmail for the destruction of the objectionable article. Only too often in such cases, both appreciation and attack were sold and duly appeared in antagonistic publications.