But Fox had one incurable flaw which was wholly wanting in Pitt: his aims were base and material. He was content for long years to be Paymaster, amassing a huge fortune from all the emoluments, legitimate and semi-legitimate, of that lucrative office, when a noble ambition would not have stooped to so gross an obscurity. And besides money he had another weakness. He longed to be a lord. In the moment of his rival's triumph and his own fall we find him writing to Lady Yarmouth soliciting a peerage in almost abject terms.[202] That was refused, and it was only after long years of unabashed solicitation that he obtained his object. At last a peerage was accorded to his wife, as if to mark the reluctance felt to giving it to himself. Then his chance came. Bute had to find a bold and unscrupulous agent to carry the Peace through the House, and Fox was his man. Not merely had Fox to earn his peerage but to wreak some vengeances.[203] He accepted the task readily, and had as his first reward the joy of removing Newcastle from the lieutenancy of three counties. And then, as if animated by a hatred of the whole human race, he expelled from their posts all, from the highest to the humblest, whom he suspected of opposition. It was a reign of terror, and by terror he accomplished the work he had been hired to do. Then he claimed his reward. He had earned and he received his peerage. But he had also earned and received a detestation, rarely accorded in England to a statesman, which lasted for the rest of his life, and which finds vent in the bitter lampoon which Gray, the gentlest of scholars, was moved to write. Later again, in his opulent seclusion, Fox was fired with a new ambition to become an earl.[204] He feared no extremity, no humiliation, to obtain his cherished object. But he failed. He was no longer worth buying; he could not, indeed, be employed. So in bitterness of spirit he passed away, cheered only by his delightful devotion to his wife and children, and by the goodwill of a few staunch friends.