Rigby had passed over to Ireland in hopes of obtaining to have his place of Master of the Rolls there confirmed in the Act for establishing the Judges for life, but had not succeeded. This disappointment, the rupture with the Rockinghams, and the precarious state of the Duke of Bedford’s health, who was breaking, and on the point of being totally blind,[51] had suggested to Rigby the thought of abandoning Grenville, whose tedious gravity mixed ill with so bacchanalian a junto; and, which was more important, was so obnoxious to the King. It was not difficult to infuse these ideas into his associates, Rigby being the only one who had prevented their deserting Grenville long before. Grenville’s American phrenzy, and his absurd breach with Dowdeswell and that party on the opening of the session, and his avoidance of hostilities towards the Court, which alarmed the Bedfords lest he should anticipate them and make his peace first, drove Rigby into immediate negotiation, which the unpromising state of their Opposition could but make desirable. Lord Temple was not come to town; and as Grenville told Rigby, would not come before Christmas, unless the Duke of Bedford sent for him: but that Court were not desirous of laying their chief under such an obligation. The Duke of Newcastle had in vain tried to renew the negotiation between the two opposing factions. Grenville’s wrong-headedness, and many civil professions towards the Duke of Bedford dropped by the Duke of Grafton the first day of the session, encouraged Rigby to make the overtures above mentioned. They were conveyed by Vernon and Meynell,[52] jockeys and gamesters of Grafton’s society; the latter his intimate in private, the other, brother-in-law of the Duchess of Bedford.[53] Among the various and precipitate changes of the Duke of Grafton at which I have hinted, and which afterwards constituted so capital a part of his character, it was not the least astonishing the partiality he had taken up for Lord Gower, who had been in love with the Duchess of Grafton; and a principal reason assigned by the Duke for their separation was his wife’s attachment to Lord Gower and the Duchess of Bedford--at the same time acquitting her of any criminal partiality. To policy and to the fear of attacks from Lord Gower and that set in the House of Lords, the world imputed Grafton’s facility in meeting the overtures. But it was not then known how little policy and how much sudden caprice influenced his Grace’s most important steps.