[Illustration: _From a portrait by Battoni_ AUGUSTUS HENRY, DUKE OF GRAFTON _To face p. 61, Vol. II_] During the illness of his chief, the leadership had devolved on the Duke of Grafton, who is to-day best remembered by the terrific attacks made upon him by "Junius", who declared "the Duke of Grafton's heart was the blackest in the kingdom." He had abandoned Rockingham, he had abandoned Wilkes, and eventually he had abandoned Chatham, though in relation to the last he made an effort, as strenuous as could be expected from one always infirm of purpose. Nicholls has told us how those who wished to destroy the Chatham administration, realized that they would almost certainly attain their object if they could separate the Duke from the Earl. They won over to their views the Duke's secretary, Bradshaw, and endeavoured also to corrupt the Duke's mistress, Nancy Parsons.[80] With the latter, however, they had no success. "She had the sense to see that the Duke's honour required him to remain firm in his connexion with the Earl of Chatham. She had the sense to see this; and she had the integrity to tell him so. Her influence for some time prevented the Duke of Grafton from deserting the Earl of Chatham. When this was seen, those who wished the destruction of that administration changed the direction of their batteries; instead of using their efforts to separate the Duke of Grafton from the Earl of Chatham, they employed them to separate him from his mistress. In this they succeeded, and married him to Miss Wriothesley, the niece of the Duchess of Bedford.[81] To separate him from the Earl of Chatham was then an easy task."[82] [80] Nancy Parsons subsequently married Lord Maynard, an event duly chronicled by an anonymous pamphleteer in "A Letter to a Celebrated Young Nobleman on His Late Nuptials," 1777. "I will not on this occasion pay your Lordship so bad a compliment as to enumerate Lady Maynard's charms; all the world knows them as well as yourself; her virtues you alone are acquainted with." [81] His first wife having divorced him, he married a daughter of the Rev. Richard Wriothesley. [82] Nicholls: _Recollections, Personal and Political_.