The meeting of Parliament took place two months afterwards and that period was spent by Newcastle and Hardwicke in arranging to discard Pitt and Legge, and to lean on Cumberland and Fox. Newcastle did not yield to Fox without reluctance, for it was, in Pitt's words, parting with some of his sole power. In his helplessness and despair he even offered to cede his place to Granville, who as Carteret had been his most detested bugbear, but who had now subsided into a quiescent President of the Council. Granville refused with a laugh, and preferred to conduct the negotiation with Fox. Fox had to him the merit of keeping out Pitt, whose former denunciations he had neither forgotten nor forgiven. So he had first endeavoured to inspire Murray to face, and now Fox to supplant Pitt. With a flash of his old diplomacy he was able to bring together the two mistrustful parties, on terms which Newcastle had curtly refused in the first insolence of his power, but which now, at the instance of Hardwicke as we have seen, he had to concede. The insane plan of a leaderless House of Commons, left like sheep on a barren moor, owned by an absentee Duke secluded in the Treasury, was to be abandoned. Fox was to be Secretary of State, leader of the House of Commons in name and in fact, and what was far more than either, he was authorised to announce that he represented the full influence of the King in the House 'to help or to hurt.' When the two shepherds, the old and the new, burning with mutual hatred and distrust, met to ratify the conditions, Fox suggested sardonically that it would be best that this should be the last time on which they should meet to agree, that there should be a final settlement, or none at all, meaning that it should be honest and complete. Newcastle, no doubt with a wry face, agreed. 'Then,' said Fox, 'it shall be so'; though indeed it was not. Fox stipulated for the admission or promotion of five persons, the only memorable ones of whom were George Selwyn, whose lovable and humorous personality has survived that of many more eminent contemporaries, and Hamilton, who is the only man, except the less-known Hawkins, who is remembered by a single speech. Chesterfield, on hearing of the reconstitution of the Ministry, observed with his habitual shrewdness that Newcastle had turned out everybody else and had now turned himself out. Fox at once repented of his adhesion, for Stone, Newcastle's confidant, informed him that had he not joined them the Ministry would have instantly resigned.[291] But now he had to content himself with negotiating through Rigby with the Bedford group, which he hoped to bring into office for the purpose of wrecking the administration.