Lord Camden was dismissed immediately after his speech, but great difficulty was found in filling his place. The Woolsack was offered to Mansfield, and then to Sir Eardley Wilmot, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, neither of whom would accept it, partly because there was then no retiring pension for a Lord Chancellor, and it was too great a risk to give up a lucrative position for a post the tenure of which was so precarious.[89] The Great Seal was then offered to Charles Yorke, who declined on the ground that he did not wish to desert the Rockingham party. The King sent for him on January 17 and charged him on his loyalty to accept the office, declaring if he did not do so, the Lord Chancellorship would never again under any circumstances be offered to him. Thus pressed, Yorke accepted very reluctantly, but the annoyance told upon his feeble health, and he died three days later--by his own hand, it was whispered. The patent that raised him to the peerage was made out and awaited only the impress of the Great Seal. When he was dying he was asked to authorise that impression, but he refused, and added with a shudder that he hoped the Great Seal was no longer in his custody.[90] "Nothing was now left for the Duke of Grafton but to get himself out of the way before "Junius" had time to point the moral. It was impossible for him to continue Prime Minister after the most ambitious lawyer at the bar had thought death a less evil than the disgrace of being his Chancellor."[91] "Junius" was not to be baulked of his prey, however, and referred to the episode in a letter to the Duke of Grafton, dated February 14, 1770. "To what an abject condition have you laboured to reduce the best of princes, when the unhappy man who yields at last to such personal instance and solicitation as can never be fairly employed against a subject feels himself degraded by his compliance, and is unable to survive the disgraceful honours which his gracious sovereign had compelled him to accept." [89] Lord Camden was a poor man, and would have been much inconvenienced by his dismissal, had not Chatham earlier secured to him a pension of £1,500. [90] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_. [91] Trevelyan: _Early Life of C. J. Fox_. The Duke resigned on January 28, and Chatham was avenged. During the absence of Lord Chatham, George III had gained a complete ascendancy over the ministry and, now that Grafton had retired, he was determined not to yield the control of affairs without a struggle. He wanted, not a minister with views of his own, but one who would obey instructions. Such a man was Lord North,[92] who, backed by the weight of the royal influence, was the ostensible Prime Minister for the ensuing twelve years.[93] [92] Frederick, Lord North (1732-1792), succeeded his father as second Earl of Guilford in 1790. He is, however, better known as Lord North.