The traverses which the English Ministers experienced, increased every day. The King was not only in opposition to himself, and had connived at Lord Bute’s seducing such of his servants as were connected with that Favourite to vote against the measures of Government, and, in truth, those servants were some of the ablest men in the House of Commons, as Elliot, Dyson, Martin, and Jenkinson, besides Sir Fletcher Norton, who, though displaced, was at the beck of the Favourite; but his Majesty, at Lord Bute’s recommendation, actually bestowed a vacant regiment on Colonel Walsh, Lieutenant-Colonel to Lord Townshend, without saying a word of it to his Ministers. It was not a command high enough to be offered to General Conway. He, with singular forbearance, had declined asking for his regiment again when he was appointed Secretary of State, lest he should be taxed with rapaciousness; and yet was determined to return to and adhere to the military line. There was another man less delicate. Lord Albemarle had been directed by the King to act as executor to his master, the late Duke of Cumberland. Ambitious, greedy, and a dexterous courtier, Lord Albemarle flattered himself that the door was now opened to him, and sought and made pretences from his trust to obtain frequent audiences of the King. He procured a grant, I think, for three lives, of the lodge at Bagshot, dependent on Windsor, which he had held during the pleasure of the Duke, and under colour of resigning a pension he enjoyed on Ireland, he obtained to have it made over to a brother and sister of his in indigent circumstances, with whom he would otherwise have been burthened. But here ended that gleam of favour. Lord Bute grew jealous, and the door of the closet was shut for ever against Lord Albemarle.