It was hardly the time for Solomons. Lord Chancellor King was a man of the people, who, by talent, integrity, and perseverance, rose to the highest rank to which a lawyer can work his way. He lost his popularity almost as soon as he acquired the seals, and these he was ultimately compelled, from growing imbecility of mind, to resign. He was the most dilatory in rendering judgments of all our chancellors, and would never willingly have decided a question, for fear he should decide it incorrectly. This characteristic, joined to the fact of his having published a history of the Apostles’ Creed, extorted from Caroline the smart saying, that ‘He was just in the law what he had formerly been in the Gospel, making creeds upon the one without any steady belief, and judgments in the other without any settled opinion. But the misfortune for the public is,’ said Caroline, ‘that though they could reject his silly creeds, they are forced often to submit to his silly judgments.’ The court private life of the sovereigns at this time was as dull as can well be imagined. There were two persons who shared in this life, and who were very miserably paid for their trouble. These were the Count de Roncy and his sister. They were French Protestants, who, for conscience’ sake, had surrendered their all in France and taken refuge in England. The count was created Earl of Lifford in Ireland. His sister, Lady Charlotte de Roncy, was governess to the younger children of George II. Every night in the country, and thrice a week when the King and Queen were in town, this couple passed an hour or two with the King and Queen before they retired to bed. During this time ‘the King walked about, and talked to the brother of armies, or to the sister of genealogies, while the Queen knotted and yawned, till from yawning she came to nodding, and from nodding to snoring.’[14] This amiable pair, who had lived in England during four reigns, were in fact hard-worked, ill-paid court-drudges; too ill-paid, even, to appear decently clad; an especial reproach upon Caroline, as the lady was the governess of her children. But they were not harder worked, in one respect, than Caroline herself, who passed seven or eight hours _tête-à-tête_ with the King every day, ‘generally saying what she did not think,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘and forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken.’ The King could bear neither reading nor being read to. But, for the sake of power, though it is not to be supposed that affection had not some part in influencing Caroline to undergo such heavy trial, she endured that willingly, and indeed much more than that.