I wish I could know at this moment for a certainty what is to become of you and me.  I talked long with Gregg about this when Storer had left us.  It is my opinion, from all I hear of your circumstances and my own, that we shall be both reduced to 2,000 a year each, and as great as the inequality is between us in all other respects, in that we shall be equal, and the alternative is to submit to the terms imposed by the new people, which may be very humiliating to us both.  If you are not an object of their justice, of their esteem, and respect, you will, I am sure, not consent to be one of their mercy only.  I shall feel the deprivation of two parts out of three of my income, but I hope that I shall have enough left for Mie Mie’s education, and to supply possible losses to her in other respects.  If I do that, and am lodged up two pair of stairs in a room at half a guinea a week, as I was when I lodged with Lord Townshend and Lord Buckingham in 1744 or 5, I will never utter an impatient word about le retour de mon sort, whatever injustice may have been done me.  If the storm falls upon you only, I am willing that you should avail yourself of anything in my situation, by which you can be assisted.  But I shall never bear with patience the insults which I know would be offered to you, if these people had their terms, in their full extent.

The King, I hear, is in good spirits, and went yesterday to Windsor to hunt, so I hope he knows that he is in a better situation than I fancy him to be.  If it is not so, and he can make up his mind to it, I must envy him his insensibility.  But I think that if he had one atom of it, and heard a hundredth part of what I hear from those who are forcing themselves into his councils, he would lose his Crown, and his life too, rather than submit to it.  It is better certainly to be kicked out of the world than kicked as long as you live [in] it, whatever his Grace may think.  But the Duke intended to insult, and not to be obliged to apologise.

A peace, I find, of some sort is negotiating with Mr. Adams.(213) Lord Cov(entry) dropped hints of a great deal which he knew of this matter, but could not reveal.  No credit seemed to be given yesterday at dinner, either to his intelligence or credit with the new people, and he had a very dissatisfied look.  Two of the Bedchamber are to be left, Lord Ailesford and the Duke of Queensberry, but the Duke’s other place will be annihilated.

The Duke of R(ichmond) affects to say that he will take nothing, and when this is repeated there is a laugh, thinking how suddenly his Grace is changed, for lately he took anything, and what no man living would have taken but himself; he has met with more of this at Chichester.  His pride must have suffered of late immensely.  Lord Huntingdon dined with us yesterday, and we had the whole story en detail, from the beginning to the end.  Mr. Bates pines in his confinement for a sight of the papers; it will not be long, I daresay, before his resentment is gratified.