On the 8th of April, the Chief-Justice Lee died: Sir Dudley Rider succeeded him; Murray rose to Attorney-General, and Sir Richard Loyd was made Solicitor. The same day the English Parliament was dissolved; and on the 31st of the following month, the new Parliament, chosen in the very spirit of the Pelhams, met and sat for five or six days in order to pass one Bill, and constitute their essence; for, by the Regency Bill, the last Parliament that should sit in the life of the King, was to revive on his death; and the new one was too acceptable to the Ministry, not to be insured. Mr. Legge presided at the Cockpit meeting, for reading the King’s Speech to the Court members. The little man lost his temperance of spirit, and began to deceive himself into an opinion of being a Minister: the Duke of Newcastle, as severe a monitor to Ministers of their nothingness as the most moral preacher, and more efficacious, soon shuffled him out of his dream of grandeur, and having raised him as high as was necessary to his own views, took an immediate turn of depressing and using him ill. At the Treasury Board, the Duke gave papers cross him to Lord Duplin to read, and even sent the latter into the city to negotiate the money affairs for the Government. The obsequiousness of his creatures could not exempt them from his Grace’s jealousy, as oft as he approached them too near to his own person. Legge gave an artful turn to his disgust, and vaunted to the Whigs that his want of favour was owing to his refusal of acting in concert with Stone and Murray: “But that would have been a stain,” said he, “which I thought no time could wash away.” Pitt came to town much in discontent: Newcastle asked him his opinion of the new settlement: he declined answering; on being pressed, he replied, “Your Grace will be surprised, but I think Mr. Fox should have been at the head of the House of Commons.” Their mutual discontents soon led Pitt and Fox to an explanation on their situation, and on all who had endeavoured to inspire them with jealousy. Pitt complained most of Mr. Pelham, who, he said, had always deprecated, but always fomented their variance. The Chancellor, ever since Pitt’s return, had falsely boasted to him of having proposed him for Secretary of State.