It is interesting, in the light of this knowledge, to turn to a contemporary portrait of the King as a statesman. "Never was any prince more religiously tenacious of his engagements or promises. Even the temporary privation of his intellect did not affect his regard to the assurances that he had given previous to such alienation of mind; nor, which is still more wonderful, obliterate them from his recollection. I know that on his recovery from the severest visitations under which he has laboured he has said to his minister, in the first moment of his convalescence, 'Previous to my attack of illness I made such and such promises; they must be effectuated,'" wrote Wraxall. "Satisfied with the legitimate power entrusted to him by the British Constitution, and deeply impressed with the sanctity as well as the inviolability of the oath administered to him at his coronation, George the Third did not desire to pass the limits of his rightful prerogative. But, equally tenacious of his just pretensions and firm in resisting popular violence and innovation, he never receded from any point or abandoned any measure, under the impulse of personal apprehension. His courage was calm, temperate, and steady. It was constitutional and hereditary; but it was always sustained by conviction, sense of public duty, and religion."[109] Yet when politics were concerned, George was not so tenacious of his word as to fulfil it to a member of the Opposition. To give one instance. He had, in 1765, promised the reversion of the colonelcy of the Blues to the Duke of Richmond, but when the holder of the command, Lord Granby, died in October, 1770, he immediately appointed Conway to the vacant post. "The Duke of Richmond, who did not expect that engagement would be kept to him, now in earnest opposition, wrote an artfully handsome letter to the King, to release him from that promise," Walpole has related; "but his Majesty had violated it before he received the Duke's dispensation and made no answer."[110] [109] _Historical Memoirs of My Own Times._ [110] _Memoirs of George III._