Although this scandal was in full cry, it was not that which set every man's hand against the minister, but his inordinate craving for power he was ill-qualified to wield. "Bute made himself immediately Secretary of State, Knight of the Garter,[165] and Privy Purse: he gave an English peerage to his wife; and the reversion of a very lucrative employment for life to his eldest son," Chesterfield complained. "He placed and displaced whom he pleased; gave peerages without number, and pensions without bounds; by those means he proposed to make his ground secure for the permanency of his power."[166] Bute, however, did not sit down quietly under the many attacks of which he was the subject, but responded to his enemies through his band of hired literary bravos. "I am beset with a host of scribblers, and I must acknowledge that I can discern great talent in some of their productions," he wrote in February, 1761. "The fire must not be allowed to spread too far, or I know not where its devastations will end. I am at a loss at present how to stem the tide of popularity which sets in at present so strongly against the court party. The King is much disposed at times to break out very violently in his objections to certain measures, but I hope I shall succeed eventually.... Pitt got the better of me in the [debate on the] Speech which his Majesty delivered from the throne, in which, as you will have read, he is made to declare that he is determined to carry on the war with vigour. We have it now in agitation to make him say quite the contrary, for we are resolved to have a peace.... I am informed of a work which is now in the press, entitled _Le Montagnard Parvenu_, of which I contrive to obtain the sheets as they are printed. The author knows more than I wish him to know; he must have been oftener behind the curtain than I suspected; it must be met by corresponding talent; the King must not see it.... I am, however, by no means without literary talent on my side; most of _our_ best authors are wholly devoted to me, and I have laid the foundation for gaining Robertson,[167] by employing him for the King, in writing the history of England; he must be pensioned."[168] [164] "Miss Chudleigh's dress or rather undress was remarkable. She was Iphigenia for the sacrifice, but so naked the high priest might easily inspect the entrails of the victim. The maids of honour, not of maids the strictest, were so offended that they would not speak to her."--Mrs. Montague's _Letters_. [165] "O Bute! If, instead of contempt, and of odium, You wish to obtain universal eulogium, From your breast to your gullet transfer the blue string, Our hearts are all yours at the very first swing." _The New Foundling Hospital for Wit._ [166] _Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield._ [167] William Robertson, historian (1721-1793). [168] Huish: _Public and Private Life of George the Third_.