Lord Talbot, a Lord of good parts, only that they had rather more bias to “extravagance” than sense, opposed the clause for continuing the Parliament for three years after the King’s death; talked over the nature of Government, asserted that the contests arrived in England during minorities had not arisen from new elections; and said, that “they might make laws with relation to future Parliaments, but had no power to extend the duration of the present.” Lord Talbot[114] was a sworn enemy to the Chancellor from some family jealousies, and soon after his father’s death and Yorke’s elevation, who had made a speech against some advantages that were demanded for the Prince of Wales, Lord Talbot said, “He should certainly submit to such high authority, if he had not in his hand an opinion directly contrary, which he could not help thinking of equal weight.” It was expected that he was going to read a judgment of his father, but it was an opinion which the present Chancellor himself had given, when he was Attorney-General, on a parallel case referred to his and Talbot’s judgment in the late reign, when the present King had figured in the character of a mutinous Prince of Wales. Lord Granville replied to Lord Talbot, “That it was the parliamentary clause that gave stability to the whole Bill, and hoped we should even have enacted it without a message from the Throne. That Rebellions were best carried on during elections; that it had been the policy of Louis the Fourteenth to foment them here at that season; and that he had had an opportunity, when last Secretary of State, of knowing, among the secrets which had not come to light, that it had been an advice given in the Council of France during the very last Rebellion, to wait for a general election.” He declared his approbation of the restrictions, not that they would, he hoped, be necessary in the present case, but as they would be a precedent for, and of service to posterity. The Bishop of London made no opposition, and the Bill was committed by 106 to 12, Lord Townshend voting for the latter clauses, and Lord Folkestone against them. The Duke of Bedford was laid up with the gout and rheumatism, but was very eager to have gone to the House and opposed the whole tenour of the restrictions. His friends apprehending that it would undo him with the King (who had been made to believe that this act against his own son was of his own direction), used all their endeavours to dissuade him, and succeeded pretty easily after the first division, which had been composed of so few, and those such insignificant Lords. Lord Sandwich, who was not impatient to precipitate his own fall, voted, with the Duke’s consent, for every part of the Bill.