For some time before he resumed office Lord Chatham had been far from well, and he was in no condition to conduct the delicate negotiations incidental to the formation of a ministry: the conferences in which he had to take part, he told his wife, heated his blood and accelerated his pulse. Soon after his administration came into power, ill-health drove him into seclusion at Bath. "Lord Chatham is here with more equipage, household and retinue, than most of the old patriarchs used to travel with in ancient days," Gilly Williams wrote to George Selwyn. "He comes nowhere but to the Pump Room. There he makes a short essay and retires." The King was much disturbed at this unexpected defection of his principal supporter, and great was the discomfiture of the ministers at being deprived of their leader. It came as a great relief to sovereign and colleagues alike when, after a considerable interval the news came that the Earl had fixed a day for his arrival in London. The joy was premature, however, for though Lord Chatham duly left Bath, when he reached Marlborough he shut himself up in his rooms at the _Castle Inn_, and remained there for some weeks, declining to see even the Duke of Grafton, who had offered to visit him. "It is by no means practicable for me to enter into the discussion of business," he wrote to the Duke on February 22, 1767.[71] When at length he did arrive in the metropolis, matters were in nowise improved, for he still refused to receive any one. It was a curious position: "the nation had for some years beheld, or thought it descried, a real minister behind the curtain, who interposed his credit without holding an office. Here was the reverse--a minister in whose name all business was transacted, but who would exercise no part of his function."[72] [71] _Chatham Correspondence._ [72] Mary Berry: _Journals_.