believe him; and his family never forgave it. The fairness of the Duke’s character, his decent and timid caution, and the high rank in which he stood with the party, made the measure much wondered at; yet it was far from producing such open offence as might have been expected, nor did the consequences spread. The Marquis of Rockingham, five days afterwards, resigned the Bedchamber; but, offering to explain his disgusts, the King with much haughtiness refused to hear him--another strain of authority much vaunted, and not without effect. The Peerage itself kissed the rod, which was declared to be held out to humble them. Nor did they take the alarm, though the rigour towards the Duke of Devonshire was prosecuted farther; for, a Privy Council being summoned November the 3rd, the King ordered the Duke’s name to be struck out of the Council-book: a severity of which there had been no precedent in the last reign but in the cases of Lord Bath and Lord George Sackville; the first, in open and virulent opposition; the second on his ignominious sentence after the battle of Minden. John Duke of Argyle,[250] when his regiment was taken from him, was not thus affronted; nor had George the First refused to admit Lord Oxford[251] to kiss his hand on the Queen’s death, nor denied an audience to the Earl Marichal[252] involved in Jacobitism. CHAPTER XIV. Preliminaries of Peace with France and Spain.--Secret springs of Political actions.--Embassy to the Court of Spain offered to Lord Sandwich.--Insult to the Duke of Cumberland.--Honours and Preferments.--Resignation of Lords Ashburnham and Kinnoul.--Lord Lincoln’s ingratitude to the Duke of Newcastle.--Bait offered to Lord Granby.--Mr. Conway.--The Duke of York obliged to go to Italy.--Profusion exercised by the Court.--Charles Townshend’s want of judgment.--His bons mots.--Attempt to propitiate Walpole.--Correspondence between him and Fox respecting the Rangership of the Parks offered to Lord Orford.--Conduct of the latter. On the 8th of the month a courier arrived with the preliminaries signed by France and Spain. I shall not detail those preliminaries, too well known, and to be found in all common histories. It is my part to explain, as far as I could know them, the leading motives of actions and events; and, though the secret springs are often unfathomable, I had acquaintance enough with the actors to judge with better probability than the common of mankind; and where these memoirs are defective or mistaken, still they may direct to the inquiry after sounder materials, and prove a key to original papers that may appear hereafter.