This general banding of the King’s servants against him, joined to Lord Granville’s neglect of all precaution to strengthen himself by a party, had the desired effect. He had offered the Seals to Willes but the very day of the execution of their scheme, who prudently declined them. Winnington, though far from being a friend to Mr. Pelham, and wishing well to Lord Granville, yet understood his own interest too well to undertake the management of the House of Commons, and was at last forced to mediate the parley between the King and the mutineers. Lord Granville took the Seals, which Lord Harrington had been the first to resign, and sent for Lord Cholmondeley from Chester to take the others. This was[142] a vain empty man, shoved up too high by his father-in-law, Sir Robert Walpole, and fallen into contempt and obscurity by his own extravagance and insufficiency. Lord Winchelsea,[143] who had been at the head of the Admiralty on the first change, and the only man who had raised his character (by his conduct at that Board) when the rest of his friends had sunk theirs, was again named to that dignity; and Lord Bath at last obtained that object of his every passion, the government of the Treasury. The other employments they had not time to fill up, for on the third day of this meteor-like Ministry, no volunteers coming in, business at a stand, the nation in astonishment, and the Parliament in indignation, the two Lords were forced to tell the King, that he must once more part with them, and submit to his old governors. Lord Granville left St. James’s laughing; Lord Bath slipped down the back stairs, leaving Lord Carlisle in the outward room, expecting to be called in to kiss hands for the Privy Seal. The King sent for Winnington, and commissioned him to invite the deserters to return to their posts. Winnington[144] had been bred a Tory, but had left them in the height of Sir Robert Walpole’s power: when that Minister sunk, he had injudiciously, and to please my Lady Townshend, who had then the greatest influence over him, declined visiting him in a manner to offend the steady old Whigs; and his jolly way of laughing at his own want of principles had revolted all the graver sort, who thought deficiency of honesty too sacred and profitable a commodity to be profaned and turned into ridicule. He had infinitely more wit than any man I ever knew, and it was as ready and quick as it was constant and unmeditated. His style was a little brutal; his courage not at all so; his good-humour inexhaustible: it was impossible to hate or to trust him. He died soon after by the ignorance of a quack,[145] when he stood in the fairest point of rising, to the great satisfaction of Mr. Pelham, whom he rivalled and despised.