Curry showed and owned himself an infamous rogue; and having first sold Wilkes, was now in his pay. Men were shocked at the treachery used towards Wilkes, and thence he again gained ground. The two Earls were then brought before the House. Wilkes only asked Lord Sandwich (the projector of the plot) if he knew of Curry being bribed by the Ministry, and being promised a place? The Earl answered, that he had promised him all proper protection, but had nothing to do with the disposition of public money. Lord March said, Kidgell had shown him the fragment of the Essay on Woman, and he had advised him to complain of it; but had never seen Carteret Webbe till within the last four days. Webbe, now blind, sat there at the bar, and was grievously abused by Davenport, Wilkes’s counsel. At two in the morning the House adjourned the farther consideration till the next day.[186] Amongst these notorious personages, notice must be taken of Sir Fletcher Norton. He had been purchased for this business (for even his attachment to Lord Mansfield and the Court were not sufficient to secure his zeal, though the cause was so bad) by the place of Chief Justice in eyre and a pension of 3000_l._ a-year. It was stipulated that Norton should quit the law, and be chief manager in the House of Commons: but no sooner was the bargain struck and the pension secured, than Norton, not caring to give up 7000_l._ a-year, which he got by his profession, pleaded that he could not _in honour_ abandon his clients. His next _point of honour_ was trying to prove by construction that Wilkes had been condemned of more than he had been condemned. Another acquisition to the Court was Sir Laurence Dundas, the rich commissary, a friend of Grenville, and now seduced from him by Rigby, another late friend of Grenville. Dundas commanded the votes of nine members. He demanded a peerage for himself, having acquired above eight hundred thousand pounds in less than four years of the late war--so far fairly that he had executed the commission on cheaper terms than anyone else had offered. He was, besides, nobly generous; yet it would have been gross indeed to have raised him to the peerage on no other foundation than the money he had gained from the public. It was known too, that Prince Ferdinand had been on the point of hanging him on part of his contract not being furnished so soon as he had engaged it should be.[187]