She, it is supposed, urged him to accept the Chancery, as the King offered, or consented, that the new peerage should descend to her son, and not to the eldest. The rest of his story was indeed melancholy, and his fate so rapid, as to intercept the completion of his elevation.[40] He kissed the King’s hand on the Thursday; and from Court drove to his brother, Lord Hardwicke’s--the precise steps of the tragedy have never been ascertained. Lord Rockingham was with the Earl. By some it was affirmed, that both the Marquis and the Earl received the unhappy renegade with bitter reproaches. Others, whom I rather believe, maintained that the Marquis left the House directly;[41] and that Lord Hardwicke refused to hear his brother’s excuses, and retiring from the room, shut himself into another chamber, obdurately denying Mr. Yorke an audience. At night it was whispered that the agitation of his mind, working on a most sanguine habit of body, inflamed of late by excessive indulgence both in meats and wine, had occasioned the bursting of a bloodvessel; and the attendance of surgeons was accounted for, by the necessity of bleeding him four times on Friday. Certain it is that he expired on the Saturday between four and six in the evening. His servants, in the first confusion, had dropped too much to leave it in the family’s power to stifle the truth: and though they endeavoured to colour over the catastrophe by declaring the accident natural, the want of evidence and of the testimony of surgeons to colour the tale given out, and which they never took any public method of authenticating, convinced everybody that he had fallen by his own hand--whether on his sword, or by a razor, was uncertain. Yorke’s speeches in Parliament had for some time, though not so soon as they ought, fallen into total disesteem. At the bar, his practice had declined from a habit of gluttony and intemperance, as I have mentioned. Yet, as a lawyer, his opinion had been in so high repute, that he was reported to have received an hundred thousand guineas in fees. In truth, his chief practice had flourished while his father was not only Lord Chancellor, but a very powerful Minister. Yorke’s parts were by no means shining. His manner was precise and yet diffuse, and his matter more sententious than instructive. His conduct was timid, irresolute, often influenced by his profession, oftener by his interest. He sacrificed his character to his ambition of the Great Seal, and his life to his repentance of having attained it.