Fortunately the splendid contingency did not take effect. For Chesterfield died without legitimate issue, and the Pitts have long been extinct; but the descendants of John Spencer's only son have been men of a purity of character and honour which have sweetened and exalted the traditions of English public life. The legacy was opportune in more respects than one. It came as a solace to Pitt, who was desperately ill at Bath with gout in his stomach, which the waters were unavailing to remove; his friends indeed feared that he would be disabled for life. It also made him independent. Bolingbroke indeed thought it made him too independent.[163] Cynics soon declared it to be timely from another point of view, for immediately after the Duchess's death there was a crisis which was to put an end to Pitt's opposition and so to his claims on her sympathies. Carteret fell, and with his fall disappeared the object of Cobham's hatred and Pitt's philippics. The tempting contrast between Pitt receiving a legacy as the leading member of the Opposition, and Pitt immediately reconciled to the Ministry, and so ceasing to be a 'Patriot,' could not escape satire. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams lost no time in penning the coarse but vigorous lampoon which depicts the ghost of the old Duchess appearing to Pitt. 'Return, base villain, my retaining fee,' says the spectre, reminds the legatee that even Judas returned the wage of betrayal, and leaves him to the 'lash of lost integrity.'[164] But these taunts were wide of the mark. It was not Pitt's integrity that had disappeared, but the object of his opposition, now that Carteret had fallen.