In the course of a few weeks the King grew worse; and, in addition to his ordinary physicians, the attendance was required of persons accustomed to these peculiar cases. The royal dislike to the Willises (father and son) was the cause of Dr. Symonds being called in. The august patient was in extreme danger during the 12th and 13th of January. He partially recovered; but the mania, in a modified form, still continued. He remained in this condition till May--fanciful, suspicious, and unsteady in his manners and conversation, particularly with the Queen and royal family and his usual society. ‘He was apparently quite himself,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘when talking on business and to his ministers. He then collected and re-collected himself.’ Dr. Symonds was by no means so efficient a man in these cases as the Willises, against whom the monarch had taken a rooted antipathy. In the King’s first illness, as Willis, the clergyman, once entered the room to visit the patient, the latter asked him if he, a clergyman, was not ashamed of himself for exercising such a profession. Willis gently hinted that the Saviour himself went about healing the sick. ‘Ay, ay!’ said the King, ‘but he hadn’t 700_l._ a-year for it.’ The King’s illness proved temporary; but he had troubles enough to keep his mind in a continual agitation. On the 26th of May, 1804, Lord Malmesbury thus writes:-- ‘The King calls the Grenvilles “the brotherhood;” says “they _must_ always either govern despotically or oppose government violently.” Duke of Portland has little doubts of the King’s doing well; quiet will set him right and nothing else; he has been fatigued by being too much talked to on the new arrangements.... Lady Uxbridge, at half-past two, very uneasy about the King; said his family were quite unhappy, that his temper was altered. He had just dismissed his faithful and favourite page (Brown), who had served him during his illness with the greatest attention. Quiet and repose were the only chance. She said the Chancellor was to go to Windsor with him, which she was glad of. King has stipulated, before he went to Windsor, that he would not go to chapel, nor on the terrace, nor take long rides. Lady Uxbridge thinks Dr. Symonds an unfit man; that the Willises, and particularly the clergyman Willis, was a more proper person to be about the King when he was getting well; so thinks Mrs. Harcourt.’