On these overtures Conway visited Pitt, neglecting nothing that might procure him to be sent on action. He was soon after commissioned to settle with the French a cartel for the exchange of prisoners, put upon the staff, and the following summer commanded in the lines at Chatham--but it went no farther: Pitt, unapt to forget or to forgive, seemed to have made these acknowledgments and reparations to his own character, not to Conway’s; and while Pitt would lend no hand to restore him to service, the Duke of Newcastle, supposing Conway more attached to the Duke of Cumberland than to him, was glad to keep him down, and to let the obstructions be imputed to Pitt. It was natural they should: Pitt took on himself the province of war and foreign operations: the whole domestic he left to Newcastle, and, except from foreign Ministers, would receive neither visits nor court. He lived in the same recluse manner as when a valetudinary patriot, indulging his own unsociable humour, and acquiring popularity, while he kept off friends and attachments. Yet some symptoms now and then appeared of deeper designs. Munchausen having presented an ample bill of extraordinaries for forage, &c., Pitt affected to be much offended at its exorbitance, said the whole should be laid before the House, and the members should be summoned to examine and consider the estimates. On this pretence he sent circular letters to the Tories, whom the Treasury never used to invite to any parliamentary attendance. Nothing could be more artful than this step. Pitt knew himself not agreeable to the Whigs, the whole body of which were cantoned out in attachments to the Dukes of Newcastle, Devonshire, and Bedford, and to Fox. The Scotch were devoted to Argyle, or looked up to Lord Bute. The Tories had no leader. This summons captivated them, and at the same time tied up their civil gratitude from exercising any rigour on the Hanoverian accounts. Nay, whatever was demanded, was granted or allowed with such inconsiderate facility, that Lord Mansfield, to stigmatise Pitt’s measures and profusion, and the Parliament’s condescension, called it _The South-sea year_. At the end of the year died Lord Arran, an inoffensive old man, the last male of the illustrious House of Ormond. He was Chancellor of Oxford, and much respected by the Jacobites, who had scarce any partizans left in whom they might venerate even a noble name. Sir George Lee died at the same time.