Bath kissed hands on February 10 (1746). Two days afterwards his ministry had come to an end, and the King had sent for Pelham to return. Carteret saw the humour of the situation and laughed it away; he owned it a mad escapade, but was all the more ready to repeat it. It was all over, the King had to surrender to the Whigs, who condescended to resume the seals on easy terms, which were the proscription of Bath's following and the admission of Pitt. The first condition was simple enough, it was the natural result of Bath's defeat. _Vae victis._ 'We immediately desired,' writes Newcastle, 'that the Court might be purged of all their friends and dependents, that Lord Bath might be out of the Cabinet Council, the Duke of Bolton, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, Mr. William Finch, the Vice-Chamberlain, Mr. Edward Finch, the Groom of the Bedchamber, Mr. Boone, and the Lord Advocate of Scotland (which were all that were left of that sort), should be removed.' We have an impression that, in spite of all, 'the black, funereal Finches' were preserved to the Bedchamber and to the card table, but that does not concern this narrative. As to the second condition, it was inevitable sooner or later, and took place in the form least offensive to the Sovereign. But the ministerial crisis and the desperate venture with Bath and Carteret testify to the formidable position of Pitt and to the equal aversion of the Sovereign. In no less an instance than Pitt's could this repulsion have been overcome. Pitt himself had begged that his pretensions to the Secretaryship at War should not act as an obstacle to an accommodation with the King, for there was evidently nothing so repugnant to the Sovereign. The King had said first that he would not have him in that office at any price, then that he would use him ill if he had it, then that he would not admit him to his presence to do the business of the office if he had it.[176] There is, if the matter be candidly considered, no just cause of reproach in this obstinacy. George II. was a gentleman, and a brave gentleman. The Hanoverians were his own people, of his own blood and language. Hanover was the home in which he had been brought up, the paradise to which he always looked longingly from his splendid exile in England. The King's personal courage Pitt had publicly and wantonly aspersed; Hanover and the Hanoverians he had held up to every form of public hatred and contempt. One cannot be surprised that George II. would have nothing to say to him except under compulsion, and refused, as between one gentleman and another, to have personal relations with him. As a constitutional ruler his duty was another matter, but he would not perform a duty so odious except in the last resort. He ignored Pitt even after Pitt had entered office. It was four years after Pitt became Paymaster that Newcastle, as the result of long pressure or intrigue, induced the King even to speak to him. This was considered a triumph for the ministry.[177]