Yet was this confirmation of his power on the point of being overset by the moody and capricious temper of Grafton himself. The very next day, as I was going through Pall-Mall, I met that Duke, driving rapidly to St. James’s. As he passed my chariot, he threw himself almost out of his own, with a countenance so inflamed with rage, that I thought him distracted, as I knew of no offence I had given to him. In the evening, going to inquire after the Queen, who lay in, Lady Hertford, then in waiting to give answers to the company, ran up to me in the utmost disorder of tears and consternation, and begged I would that instant go to her lord, as she did not know what might happen between him and her nephew. This was more and more mysterious to me; but, after she had told me a few words on the subject, and I had prevailed on her to compose herself a little in so public a place, I went to Lord Hertford, and learned the whole story. Their son, Lord Beauchamp, who was ambitious of establishing a great power in his family, both by income and parliamentary interest, had by a favourable opportunity secured, as he thought, the borough of Coventry, where the late Duke of Grafton, Lady Hertford’s father, had had the principal weight. The present Duke had beheld that progress with uneasiness, and was not without jealousy of Lord Hertford’s favour with the King, and even of his aspiring to the Treasury. A vacancy happening, the Duke had rudely refused his interest (for the Crown has much influence there) to Lord Hertford for a Mr. Nash, whom the latter supported against Sir Richard Glynn; the Earl, who had one son already member there, declining, from fear of envy, to set up another of his family. At the same time that he asked the Duke of Grafton’s interest, he had solicited the Secretary at War, Lord Barrington, Sir Edward Hawke, First Lord of the Admiralty, and General Howard, Governor of Chelsea College, to influence some soldiers and sailors, who had votes at Coventry, in favour of Mr. Nash. Rigby had learned this detail from Mr. Bradshaw or Sir Richard Glynn, who had purchased the interest of one Waring in that place, the latter of whom had been ill-used by Lord Beauchamp, and had married a natural daughter of Ranby the surgeon, one of the flatterers of Mrs. Haughton. She and Rigby inflamed the Duke against Lord Hertford, representing it as an attack on the Treasury, and had painted me as the adviser, though no man living had so rooted an aversion to electioneering; nor did I, till the quarrel broke out, know one syllable of the detail, nor even who were the parties concerned. But what was my astonishment when Lord Hertford told me, that that very morning, when I met the Duke in his raging fever, he had gone to the King, and told him he would resign! He had declared the same intention to Lord Granby, and had sought the Chancellor to notify it to him likewise. From thence, with unparalleled insolence, he had repaired to Lord Hertford, and