The Bedfords in the interim had totally renounced Bute. The Duchess had carried her animosity still higher, and would not, on her return from the French embassy, be prevailed on to pay her duty to the Princess of Wales. Casting about for allies (for Grenville and Lord Halifax they despised), the Bedford faction had not been without views of connecting with the Duke of Cumberland and Newcastle; and his Royal Highness had at this very juncture been invited to Woburn. The death of Lord Egremont seeming to dissolve that ministry, a bolder stroke was struck; and the Bedfords, hoping under him to get possession of the government, determined to attempt making Mr. Pitt minister. With this view Rigby, in the most private and mysterious manner, went down to Woodstock, and sent for the Duke of Bedford, who was then at Blenheim, and persuaded him to go directly to town to the King, and advise him to send for Mr. Pitt.[352] Lord Shelburne, who in his separate department had affected to act minister too, had assured them that this would not be opposed by Lord Bute; but had not trusted them, or was not trusted himself, with Lord Bute’s real disposition that way. Rigby had no sooner lighted the match than he left the mine to take fire, and retired to his own house in the country; while the Duke of Bedford posted to the King, and told him, that, as he had made peace abroad, he must now make it at home, and that could only be effected by sending for Mr. Pitt. Lord Bute, hearing this measure had been prescribed by the Duke of Bedford, thought it wiser to have the merit of it himself. Mr. Pitt, though trusting to the clamour of party for support, had seldom openly courted it; and, since he had had such eminent services to boast, had affected to despise it. He had kept clear of all transactions with Wilkes, and had condemned Lord Temple’s connection with him, and, yet more, his visits to that incendiary in the Tower. Mr. Pitt’s amity might reconcile the people, and no man was so accommodating a partner in power; Pitt having few or no dependents, and scorning to meddle in the distribution of common places and preferments. On these grounds the Favourite, through the intervention of Alderman Beckford, entered into a negotiation with Mr. Pitt, and, finding facilities there beyond his most sanguine hopes, induced the King to send for that formidable dictator. It was on the 28th of August that Mr. Grenville, arriving at Buckingham House, was struck with the apparition of Mr. Pitt’s chair and servants in the Court. This was the first notice he or the public received of a phenomenon so little expected, at least by the latter.