Lord Rockingham was a patient man, but when, three days after his interview with the King, one of the supporters of the ministry, John Offley, Member of Parliament for Oxford, wrote to inform him of a report that was being spread in political circles "that Lord Strange had yesterday an interview with the King, who assured him he did not wish for the repeal of the Stamp Act, only wished that it might be altered," the Prime Minister felt that the time had come when a conciliatory attitude would be the veriest folly. Having obtained the assurance of Lord Strange that he had given publicity to the statement attributed to him, Rockingham waited on the sovereign, not once, but, Lord Albemarle thinks, three times, on each occasion obtaining some slight satisfaction. "It would seem", Lord Albemarle remarks, "as if the minister had determined not to quit the royal presence until he had secured 'the word of a King.'"[52] In vain the King endeavoured to evade a direct answer, in vain he contrived to confuse the issue: Lord Rockingham was determined that, unless the King gave him authority to contradict the report, he would forthwith resign. George at last realised it was advisable to suffer the humiliation of withdrawing from an untenable position as there was no other course open to him that was not infinitely more disagreeable. Indeed, he saw that if Lord Rockingham resigned, it would be necessary to undergo the greater ignominy of begging him to remain, for at the moment there was no one to take his place. The objections to Bute were insuperable, and even the King's courage was not great enough to attempt again to impose him on the nation; of Grenville, George had declared he "would sooner meet him at the end of his sword than let him into his closet"; while Pitt's attitude towards the repeal of the Stamp Act made him less acceptable than the present Prime Minister. In the end, therefore, he gave the desired contradiction in writing. "I desire you would tell Lord Strange that I am now, and have been hitherto, for modification; but that when many were for enforcing, I was then for a repeal of the Stamp Act."[53] [52] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_. [53] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_; Walpole: _Memoirs of George III_; etc. "The King complained that Lord Rockingham had taxed him with breach of his word."--Walpole: _Memoirs of George III_.