But if Lord North established his credit at Court by recurring to the patronage of the Favourite, it did but serve to revive jealousies of Lord Bute and the Princess; a strong instance of which broke forth. Sir Edward Hawke had declared for an addition of four thousand seamen, then retracted that opinion, but said, if he should remain in the Admiralty,[67] he should the next year be for adding five thousand men. On this declaration of so renowned an Admiral, Lord Craven and Lord Abingdon moved for two thousand seamen more. The Duke of Richmond supported their motion with great abilities, knowledge, and matter, and pointed out the encroachments and dangers from France and Spain in Corsica and the East Indies, and from the formidable Spanish fleet that seemed to threaten Jamaica, warning the Ministers that they should be answerable for refusing more seamen, if any mischief should arise. Still they refused them, but with much confusion and little argument. Lord Chatham went farther, in his best manner and with most inflammatory matter, perceiving how little he could hope either from the King or Parliament. He pronounced that since the King’s accession there had been no _original_ Minister (a forced expression for no _independent_ Minister) in this country; that there was a _secret influence_ (which he described so as to point at the Princess, not at Lord Bute) which governed and impeded everything, and was greater than the King. He drew a flattering yet artfully ridiculous picture of the King’s gracious facility in granting everything in his closet, while in Council or in Parliament it was defeated by the faction of the secret influence. He himself, he said, had been duped and deceived by it; and though it was a hard thing to say of himself, confessed he had been a fool and a changeling. The Duke of Grafton, mistaking Lord Chatham, asked whether the King or himself had been pointed at by the Earl, and spoke with warmth, dignity, and grace. He declared Lord Chatham had forced him into Administration, as he had many letters to prove; but the happiest day of his life had been that of his resignation. For the words dropped by Lord Chatham, _they were the effects of a distempered mind brooding over its own discontents_.[68] This last expression hurt Lord Chatham deeply: he repeated it over and over, and said he had drawers full of papers to prove that he had always had sufficient vigour of mind to avoid the snares laid for him. He would neither retract, he said, nor explain away the words he had uttered; but returned the Duke’s attack with severe reflections on his Grace’s falsehood and deviations. The Ministers did not dare to take notice of what had been thrown out against the Princess, but rejected the motion by 70 to 38. The Duke of Richmond hinted that in the late war the Emperor of Morocco had offered to embark fifty thousand men on board Admiral Saunders’s fleet, and invade Spain. Lord Rockingham, the Duke