Augustus the Third[374] having enjoyed but for few months the cessation of war, and of those misfortunes which a vain and impertinent favourite[375] had drawn down upon him, died about this time, leaving Poland at liberty to get rid of a family who had sacrificed their religion for a crown, without obtaining essential benefits for themselves, or conferring any on subjects so dearly purchased. The new Elector of Saxony, his son, was infirm in mind and body, and survived his father not a year. We, on whom an empty favourite had heaped little less disgrace by peace than Count Bruhl had inflicted on Saxony by war, had occasion to feel how wide the terror of our arms had extended our influence. The Duke of York, making the tour of the Mediterranean, and being expected at Florence, the Pope[376] ordered Cardinal Albani to inform Sir Horace Mann, the King’s minister in Tuscany, that his Royal Highness, if he pleased to visit Rome, would be received there with all the honours due to his birth. The nuncio at Florence was commanded too to wait on the Prince, and repeat the same; to invite him to Rome, and to assure him of all safety, honours, and amusements. His Royal Highness accepted the invitation; and the son of James the Second, and his grandson, a cardinal of that very church, had the mortification of being forced to retire to Albano, where they had a villa, lest they should see a heretic Duke of York courted and treated in that holy city whence the thunders of the Vatican had been hurled against the great Elizabeth. But this was not the last nor least humiliation which the wretched and helpless line of Stuart received from the hands of their Pontiff, and from that church for which they had sacrificed themselves, their crowns, and their posterity. On the 3rd of November Charles Yorke resigned the post of Attorney-General, alleging to Mr. Grenville that his father and the Duke of Newcastle had insisted upon it. Yorke, on the trial of the printers, had made a warm speech against Wilkes, and was to carry on the prosecution. The father and the sons were certainly in their hearts inclined to prerogative; but interest so swayed their actions, and it was so much the point of the whole family that Charles Yorke should be Chancellor, that we shall find one perpetual stream of dubitation and trimming run through their conduct. The father, indeed, more soured, and with pride more affronted, towards this close of his life, grew more settled in his asperity towards the Court. Nor was he the only instrument of prerogative whom the Court lost because it could not reward all its devotees up to their ambition. In Ireland the scene commenced unfavourably. The new Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Northumberland,[377] lost a question the first day in the House of Commons there by so considerable a number as forty, who would not suffer the word _adequate_ to be applied to the Peace in the address. CHAPTER XXII.