Lord Lincoln,[260] Newcastle’s favourite nephew and heir, displayed more open ingratitude. He asked an audience of the King, called his uncle a factious old fool, and said he could not forget a message which himself had brought from his uncle to his Majesty in the year 1757, in which the Duke had signified to his then Royal Highness, that, if he would not disturb the tranquillity of the rest of his grandfather’s reign, the Duke, in or out of place, though he hoped the latter, would support his measures to the utmost. It was justice, to recollect this promise; but Lincoln’s subsequent conduct, at the same time that it was inconsistent, was honourable neither towards the King nor his uncle. He had a second audience, in which he told the King that the Duke insisted on his resigning; “but if I must,” said he, “I will show but the more warmly the next day that I remember the message, of which I have kept a copy in writing.” The third time, when he went to resign, he said he must oppose. The King told him his tone was much changed since his first audience. But the Court never had much reason to complain of Lord Lincoln’s hostilities. His exceeding pride kept him secluded from the world, and rarely did he appear either at Court or in Parliament. For some time he fluctuated between Lord Bute and Mr. Pitt, to the latter of whom he at last attached himself; but with constant derision of, and insult to, his uncle, and, whatever were the Duke of Newcastle’s faults, cruel and unmerited. The truth was, Lord Lincoln’s avarice was as unbounded as his haughtiness. Though possessed of two places for life, and one of them the most lucrative in England, the auditorship of the Exchequer, which never produces less than eight thousand pounds a year, and during the war had brought in at least twenty, he had resented the Duke’s not bestowing on him two more places for the lives of his younger sons. As every door was to be opened or barricaded that could admit or exclude friends or enemies to the preliminaries, messengers were stationed at the sea-ports to waylay Lord Granby on his return from the army, with the most advantageous offers, as the Ordnance and command of the army, setting aside the worthy old Marshal Ligonier[261] with a large pension; a bait gulped by the former without scruple. Mr. Conway, to whom they did the honour of thinking they could not bribe him, (and whoever they could not bribe, they concluded, could not approve their treaty,) was decorated with the empty honour of conducting home the army; which would and did prevent his return before the discussion of the preliminaries in Parliament. And the Duke of York, whom they would not silence by favours, they obliged to go on an idle expedition to Italy.