The Resident was, so far as Lady Mary was concerned, an ill-conditioned fellow.  She asked him once or twice for the English papers, but the reply made, with intention, on each occasion was that they were engaged.  “Since the Ministry of Mr. Pitt,” she remarked, “he is so desirous to signalise his zeal for the contrary faction, he is perpetually saying ridiculous things, to manifest his attachment; and as he looks upon me (nobody knows why) to be the friend of a man I never saw, he has not visited me once this winter.  The misfortune is not great.”  Lady Mary was amused at being mistaken for a politician.  “I have often been so, though I ever thought politics so far removed from my sphere.  I cannot accuse myself of dabbling in them, even when I heard them talked over in all companies; but, as the old song says,

  ‘Tho’ through the wide world we should range,
  ‘Tis in vain from our fortune to fly.’”

Lady Mary always cherished affection and respect for her son-in-law, Lord Bute.  He had been since 1747 a favourite with Frederick, Prince of Wales, who in 1750 appointed him a Lord of his Bedchamber.  When Frederick died in the following year Bute had established his popularity with the Princess, who, in 1756, secured his appointment as Groom of the Stole.  “I have something to mention that I believe will be agreeable to you,” Edward Wortley Montagu wrote to his wife at this time; “I mean some particulars relating to Lord Bute.  He stood higher in the Prince of Wales’s favour than any man.  His attendance was frequent at Leicester House, where this young Prince has resided, and since his father’s death has continued without intermission, till new officers were to be placed under him.  It is said that another person was to be Groom of the Stole, but that the Prince’s earnest request was complied with in my Lord’s favour.  It is supposed that the governors, preceptors, etc., who were about him before will now be set aside, and that my Lord is now the principal adviser.”  Neither Montagu nor his wife in their published correspondence make any allusion to the scandal current about the intimate relations of the Princess and Lord Bute, though it was so widely spread it is almost impossible it should not have come to the ears of one or other of them.

On the accession of George III Bute was sworn a member of the Privy Council, and in November, 1760, appointed Groom of the Stole and First Gentleman of the Bedchamber.  His influence with the young King was paramount.  “I pity Lady Bute,” Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann on January 27, 1761, “her mother will sell to whoever does not know her, all kinds of promises and reversions, bestow lies gratis and wholesale, and make so much mischief, that they will be forced to discard her in three months, which will go to Lady Bute’s heart, who is one of the best and most sensible women in the world; and who, educated by such a mother, has never made a false step.”  As a matter of fact, the only request known to be