The King, on all other occasions so able and steady a dissembler, did not affect now to disguise the offence he had taken at his Ministers. He had long inwardly groaned under their insolence and disagreeable qualities: and though for some time Lord Bute a little restrained his Majesty’s impatience to throw them off, both the Favourite and the mother had contributed to foment the King’s aversion. The Duchess of Bedford had openly affronted the Princess, and avowed her hatred to Lord Bute. To Lord Sandwich the Favourite bore private resentment, for having courted a little too assiduously, though he was disappointed in the pursuit, rich old Wortley Montagu, Lady Bute’s father.[129] But Grenville was the principal rock of offence. I have mentioned his jealousy and ill-treatment of the Favourite; his manners made him as distasteful to the King, as his engrossing fondness for power had made him to the Favourite. His ill-judged economy had led him to refuse twenty thousand pounds to the King, to buy the ground behind the Green Park, where the King had made a new garden, and where, by the loss of that purchase, a new row of houses was erected, that overlooked the King and Queen in their most domestic hours. And, as if non-compliance with even his innocent pleasures was not sufficiently offensive, that awkward man of ways and means, whom Nature had fitted for no employment less than a courtier’s, fatigued the King with such nauseous and endless harangues, that, lamenting being daily exposed to such a political pedant, the King said to Lord Bute of Grenville, “When he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he may not tire me for an hour more.”