Meanwhile Newcastle, proscribed by Pitt and spurned by Fox, knew not whither to turn. He broke out in a wail against them to the Chancellor, the keeper of his conscience even more than of the King's. 'My dearest Lord,' he writes (October 20, 1756), 'tho' a consciousness of my own innocence and an indifference as to my own situation may, and I hope in God will, support me against all the wickedness and ingratitude which I meet with, yet your Lordship cannot think that I am unmindful of or senseless to the great indignity put upon me by these two gentlemen.' Newcastle in the character of a Christian martyr, the prey of heathen raging furiously, has something humorous and incongruous about it, were the attitude less abject. But in a sentence or two he returns to a more familiar character. 'Allow me only to suggest to your Lordship the necessity of making the King see that the whole is a concert between Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox. The news and principles upon which they act are the same, viz., to make themselves necessary, and masters of the King ... that the only thing Mr. Pitt alledges against me is the _conduct of the war_.' ... 'Quit before the Birthday I must and will.' He goes on to consult the Chancellor as to whether he shall ask any favours for his relations.[353] So the falling Minister in his straits tried to play upon the King's two strongest passions, fear of being dominated and fear for Hanover. How wise Pitt was to go straight to Lady Yarmouth! But Newcastle had tried other measures as well after Fox's resignation. The very day he received it he had hurried to his old enemy Granville, now comfortably ensconced in the Presidency of the Council, and offered to exchange offices with him, giving him his friend Fox as Chancellor of the Exchequer.[354] Granville, he remembered, had once been willing to face far greater hazards with Pulteney. But Granville was ten years older; he had, to use his own expression, put on his nightcap; and he laughed the suppliant Duke out of the room. 'I will be hanged a little before I take your place,' he said, not perhaps without some relish for his chief's terror and distress, 'rather than a little after.' But he added more gravely that '_we_ must determine either to give Mr. Fox what he wants, or to take in Mr. Pitt; who,' Newcastle adds piteously, 'will not come.'[355] Then Newcastle tried Egmont and Halifax. Egmont was willing to take the seals with a British peerage. But it was in the House of Commons that strength was wanted. No such strength was to be found without Pitt or Fox. Dupplin, one of the Paymasters, an able man of business and much in Newcastle's confidence, said broadly and truly, 'Fox and Pitt need only sit still and laugh, and we must walk out of the House!' And yet the House of Commons was almost unanimous in devotion to the Minister. Was there ever so strange a situation?