Soon after the temporary resignation of the Grey ministry, King William invited the Jockey Club to dinner at St. James’s Palace. Among the invited was old Lord Sefton, who was a Whig _and something more_, and who was resolved to avenge on the King the wrongs inflicted, as he assumed, by that dissembling monarch on his friends of the late administration. Lord Sefton accordingly withdrew from the club. The unsuspicious King at once invited him as a friend, but Lord Sefton was ungracious enough to absent himself, and did not condescend to restore the sovereign to favour till Lord Grey was once more at the helm of the national ship--steersman and captain too. His lordship and family appeared at the ball given by the Queen in May, to which, of course, they had been all invited. Meanwhile, however, the King had learned how he stood in the estimation of the Earl, meeting whom in the Queen’s ball-room, he turned his royal back upon him, publicly. Thence arose embittered feelings on the part of the offended peer. _Vivere sat, vincere_, ‘to conquer is to live enough,’ is the Sefton motto, and the bearers of it seem to have been determined to have this taste of life, by putting down the royal offenders, and appearing before them to enjoy their humiliation. ‘Lord Molyneux’ (Lord Sefton’s son, says Mr. Raikes, in his _Diary_) ‘has attended a public meeting at Liverpool, where he made a speech, and, actuated by his father’s feelings, alluded very bitterly to the conduct of both the King and Queen. He afterwards came to town, and appeared, with his family, at the ball. On the following day, the King commanded Mr. W. Ashley, as vice-chamberlain to the Queen, to write to Lord Molyneux, and request he would not appear at court again. Nothing could be more just. This is only a slight instance,’ adds the Tory Diarist, ‘of Whig insolence and ingratitude. Sefton has been made a peer, and treated with the most marked courtesy and attention by the present King.’ In the following June, Lord Lichfield, master of the buckhounds, prepared a list of guests invited by him to meet the King, at the conclusion of Ascot races, at dinner, at Lord Lichfield’s house, Fern Hill. The King expressly ordered that Lord Sefton should not be invited. Considering the offence, it was singular that any one should have thought of winning the Queen over to use her interest in influencing her husband to withdraw the command. Lady Lichfield, however, did so, intimating to her Majesty that, if the King had been moved by what was reported to have passed at the Jockey Club, she was enabled to say how that matter had been much misrepresented. The Queen confined all reply and comment to the words, coldly uttered, that she hoped it was so.