The members of the Cabinet varied in number from eight to fourteen, and included the Great Officers of the Royal Household. In April, 1740, for instance, it consisted of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the Master of the Horse, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, two Secretaries of State, the Groom of the Stole, the First Minister for Scotland, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the First Commissioner of the Admiralty, and the Master of the Ordnance. Besides these, the Duke of Bolton was also included, for the somewhat inadequate reason that "he had been of it seven years ago."[125] As such an immense body must have been quite unmanageable from a business point of view, there also existed an interior council, consisting of Walpole, the Lord Chancellor, and the two Secretaries of State, who consulted together, in the first instance, on the more confidential points, and reported the result of their deliberations to the rest of the Cabinet. [125] Hervey's "Memoirs of George II.," vol. ii. p. 551. The size and composition of a Cabinet is a question which has always been left entirely to the discretion of the Prime Minister. In 1770 and 1783, when Lord North and Pitt were Premiers, the number was reduced to seven. Later on, this was increased; but Lord Wellesley, in 1812, expressed his conviction that thirteen was an inconveniently large number, and Sir Robert Peel, some twenty years later, declared that the Executive Government would be infinitely better conducted by a Cabinet composed of only nine members. Among His Majesty's advisers in Georgian days, and earlier, peers usually preponderated. The younger Pitt was the only Commoner in his first Cabinet. Nowadays both Houses are suitably represented. There is no definite rule laid down as to which posts in the Administration carry with them a seat in the Cabinet; but the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, and the Lord Chancellor are invariably included. Statesmen who hold no office at all, as we have seen in the case of the Duke of Bolton, have occasionally been given a seat. Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon, sat in Charles I.'s Cabinet without office; and, later on, Lord Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord John Russell were each accorded a similar privilege. Lord Mansfield, on his elevation to the seat of the Lord Chief Justice, in 1756, became a member of the Cabinet, and did not cease to take part in the discussions until 1765. The precedent he thus created was afterwards cited in the case of Lord Ellenborough, another Lord Chief Justice, who was admitted to the Cabinet of "All the Talents" in 1806. By this time, however, the inclusion of any but the actual holders of parliamentary offices was considered unusual, and it has never been repeated.