It is difficult to say which made the more contemptible figure on this conclusion of the City’s resistance,--the King and the House of Commons on one side, or the Opposition and the City’s magistrates on the other. The latter by disunion rendered themselves ridiculous and insignificant; and yet neither the Crown nor House of Commons dared to take advantage of the neglect into which the two martyrs were fallen. If the King comforted himself with views of future aggrandizement by the humiliations of the Opposition, it must be owned that he bought those prospects with most disgraceful mortifications. Surely it had been more glorious to have purchased the love of his people by condescensions and reverence for the constitution. It was pitiful consolation, and beneath the majesty of ambition, to sit a tacit spectator of the persecution of Wilkes by his friends, when all the artillery of Government had been vainly employed to fulminate so worthless a man! No sooner was the session at an end, than the paper war which had been carried on anonymously between Wilkes and parson Horne, broke out under their respective names with redoubled violence.[191] They told all they knew of each other, and yet proved nothing but little tricks, foolish vanities, and suspicions of each other. Men wondered they had nothing worse to say. Horne appeared to have scarce any parts, and Wilkes not much better. These peevish jarrings diverted them from exposing and making advantage of the weakness of the Court in its conduct towards the magistrates. All Wilkes, his Lord Mayor, or the remnant of the Bill of Rights attempted, and that without success, was a test in all boroughs where candidates should be sworn, to try to obtain shorter Parliaments, the removal of pensioners and placemen from the House of Commons, and a more equal representation. Things being quiet, Lord Bute stole again into England; from a mixture of timidity and pride he had been wandering about Italy incognito, under his private name of Sir John Stuart. At the beginning of June died three men in great offices. The first was Lord Strange, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; a man of whom much has been said in these Memoirs.[192] He died suddenly at Bath, aged fifty-five. The second was George Montagu, Earl of Halifax, Lord Privy Seal. He was of the same age, but had outlived the reputation of parts, which in his youth he had been supposed to have, his fortune, and his constitution, the latter of which he had destroyed by drinking, and his fortune by waste and deliberate neglect. The third was Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, a dull proud man, neither respected nor censured.