The Court having secured the obedience of Parliament, it was determined to assume a high tone of authority; to awe, and even to punish the refractory. “The King, it was given out, _would_ be King,--would _not_ be dictated to by his ministers, as his grandfather had been. The prerogative was to shine out: great lords must be humbled.” Fox--whose language ever was, that the Crown must predominate whenever it would exert its influence--warmly upheld the doctrine of rewards and punishments; and, having employed the former with so much success, he was rejoiced to inflict the latter to glut his own vengeance. The first fruit of these councils struck mankind with astonishment. The Duke of Devonshire, who had kept himself in the country, coming to town on the 28th of October, went to pay his duty to the King, and, as is customary with the great officers, went to the backstairs, whence he sent the page in waiting to acquaint his Majesty with his attendance. “Tell him,” said the King angrily, “I will not see him.” The page, amazed, hesitated. The King ordered him to go and deliver those very words. If the page had been thunderstruck, it may be imagined what the Duke felt. He had, however, the presence of mind to send in the page again to ask what he should do with his key of Lord Chamberlain. The reply was, “Orders will be given for that.” The Duke went home with a heart full of rage, and tore off his key, which immediately after he carried to Lord Egremont, the Secretary of State; and the next morning his brother Lord George Cavendish, and Lord Besborough[248] his brother-in-law, resigned their places. As the Court urged that the Duke’s disgrace was owing to his refusal of attending Councils, his Grace’s friends pleaded that he had asked and obtained the King’s leave not to attend them, as he seldom had attended them even in the late reign; and that, his summons having been made by a commis in Lord Egremont’s office, the Duke did not think that such a message interfered with his dispensation. Some said there had been no intention to dismiss the Duke; attributing the affront to a sudden start of passion in the King, who, coming from Richmond that morning, had met the Dukes of Devonshire and Newcastle together in a chariot, whence suspecting a Cabal, he had gone home in anger, and, at the moment the Duke arrived at St. James’s, was writing to Lord Bute that _now was the time_; words which proved at least that the Duke’s disgrace had been meditated, and which in truth nobody doubted. The Princess had more than once termed him ironically _the Prince of the Whigs_; and his Grace having dared to desert from Fox’s banner, left no doubt of the latter having contributed to irritate the prejudice already conceived. Nor could Fox wipe off the suspicion: though, as soon as the affront was known, he had hurried to Devonshire House,[249] and protested his utter ignorance of any such design. The Duke received him coolly, did not pretend to