I heard yesterday, however, from Keate, who is attending me (and who is the King's surgeon, and sees him when he is in town), that he saw his Majesty after the levee on Wednesday, and that he was ill, out of sorts, and in considerable agitation; that he enquired of him about his health, when the King said he had much to annoy him, and that 'many things passed there (pointing to the Cabinet, out of which he had just come) which were by no means agreeable, and that he had had more than usual to occupy him that morning.' Keate said he was very sure from his manner that something unpleasant had occurred. This was, I have since discovered, the question of a creation of Peers again brought forward, and to which the King's aversion has returned so much so that it is doubtful if he will after all consent to a large one. It seems that unless the Peers are made (in the event of the necessity arising) Brougham and Althorp will resign; at least so they threaten. I have seen enough of threats, and doubts, and scruples, to be satisfied that there is no certainty that any of them will produce the anticipated effects, but I am resolved I will try, out of these various elements, if I cannot work out something which may be serviceable to the cause itself, though the materials I have to work with are scanty. The Ministers were all day yesterday settling who the new Peers shall be, so seriously are they preparing for the _coup_. They had already fixed upon Lords Molyneux, Blandford, Kennedy, Ebrington, Cavendish, Brabazon, and Charles Fox, Littleton, Portman, Frederick Lawley, Western, and many others, and this would be what Lord Holland calls assimilating the House of Lords to the spirit of the other House, and making it harmonise with the prevailing sense of the people. April 8th, 1832 {p.283} Lord Harrowby was out of town when I called there on Friday, so I wrote to him the substance of my conversation with Wood. Yesterday he returned. In the evening I met Wood at dinner at Lord Holland's, when he told me that he found on the part of his friends more reluctance than he had expected to give up the fifty-six, that he had done all he could to persuade them, but they made great objections. Moreover he had had a conversation with Sandon which he did not quite like, as he talked so much of holding the party together. All this was to make me think they are stouter than they really are, for I am better informed than he thinks for.