On the 24th of May, the petition of the freeholders of Middlesex was presented to the King by Serjeant Glynn and six others. Another from Boston was carried by Colonel Barré. CHAPTER XII. Election of Pope Ganganelli.--Quarrel between the French and Russian Ambassadors.--Agitation in the Country after the Rising of Parliament.--Lord Chatham Appears at the King’s Levee.--Supposed Motive of his Reappearance.--State of the Country.--Horne’s Libel on Onslow.--Popular Excitement.--Aspersions on Lord Holland.--Petition from Westminster to Dissolve the Parliament.--Dr. Musgrave’s Pretended Discovery.--Russian Project to Attack Constantinople by Sea.--Conquest of Corsica.--Petition against the Parliament.--Indolence of the Duke of Grafton.--Disturbance at the Execution of two Rioters.--Affairs of Ireland.--Prosecution of Vaughan.--Remonstrance of Junius to the King.--Story of the Duke of Gloucester and Maria Walpole. 1769. I must now turn to foreign affairs, or events connected with them. In the conclave, the Jesuitic party, alarmed at the demand made by the Bourbon Crowns of suppression of the Jesuits, had fixed on Cardinal Chigi for Pope--but miscarried. The French and Spanish Ambassadors told that faction, that had they elected him, they alone would have enjoyed him; insinuating that he would not have been acknowledged by the allied Crowns. Cardinal Bernis was dispatched to Rome, with orders to put a negative on any candidate but Cardinal Ganganelli; and succeeding, was named Ambassador to the new pontiff.[225] He was a Roman monk of the lowest extraction, and had exercised all the affected virtues of his order with a perseverance worthy of the ambition of Sixtus Quintus. But though his success was adequate, the times demanded talents of another complexion; and though Ganganelli’s address was as well suited to retrieve the affairs of the Church as some of his ablest predecessors had been to build up its greatness, yet no abilities could reconcile the blackest and most revengeful set of men to their own destruction; and though Ganganelli endeavoured by temporising and delays, to ward off the blow that would deprive the papal Throne of its most trusty satellites, yet the two Crowns at last forced from him the fatal Bull that abolished the order and exposed the Pope to the vengeance of the Jesuits, who became his assassins, when, in spite of himself, he had been obliged to discard them as his champions.[226]