[157] William Beckford (1709-1770), Lord Mayor of London 1762 and 1769. [158] _Chatham Correspondence._ [159] "My old friend was once a skilful courtier; but, since he himself has attained a kind of royalty, he seems more attentive to support his own majesty than to pay the necessary regard to that of his sovereign."--Lord Lyttelton. [160] "The day the King went to the House [of Lords] I was three quarters of an hour getting through Whitehall. There were subjects enough to set up half-a-dozen petty kings; the Pretender would be proud to reign over the footmen alone, and indeed, unless he acquires some of them, he will have no subjects left; all their masters flock to St. James's."--Horace Walpole. Lord Egremont took Pitt's place, and the Duke of Newcastle made no secret of his delight and relief at having ridded his Cabinet of so overshadowing a subordinate; but the Duke's joy was at least premature, since, as he might have foreseen, the loss of Pitt so greatly weakened the Ministry that within a few months the King was able to remove from the direction of affairs that nobleman of whom George II had said, "He loses an hour every morning, and is running after it the rest of the day," and whom George III now treated with scarcely veiled contempt. "For myself I am the greatest cipher that ever walked at Court. The young King is hardly civil to me, talks to me of nothing, scarcely answers me upon my own Treasury affairs," the Prime Minister wrote on November 7, 1760: and about the same time he complained that, with one exception, he could not remember a single recommendation of his which had taken place since the accession.[161] [161] _Hardwicke Papers, Bedford Correspondence._ Bute, however, gave the minister the _coup de grâce_ when the latter strongly advocated the appointment of a certain clergyman to the Archbishopric of York. "If your Grace has so high an opinion of him," said he, "why did you not promote him _when you had the power_?" This was the last straw, and the Duke of Newcastle resigned on May 26, 1762, when Lord Bute became First Lord of the Treasury, with Lord Egremont and George Grenville as Secretaries of State, the incapable and worthless Sir Francis Dashwood,[162] as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Henry Fox as Leader of the House of Commons. The Admiralty, after the death of Lord Anson, was offered to Lord Halifax[163] who, aspiring to be a Secretary of State, declined the office, and persisted in his refusal until Lord Bute assured him that next to the Treasury it was the most _lucrative_ post on the Administration. A humorous description of this incident is given in the "Fables for Grown Gentlemen."