to have recourse.  He had always been regarded as a Whig of the Whigs.  He had been the friend and disciple of Walpole.  He had long been connected by close ties with William Duke of Cumberland.  By the Tories he was more hated than any man living.  So strong was their aversion to him that when, in the late reign, he had attempted to form a party against the Duke of Newcastle, they had thrown all their weight into Newcastle’s scale.  By the Scots, Fox was abhorred as the confidential friend of the conqueror of Culloden.  He was, on personal grounds, most obnoxious to the Princess Mother.  For he had, immediately after her husband’s death, advised the late King to take the education of her son, the heir-apparent, entirely out of her hands.  He had recently given, if possible, still deeper offence; for he had indulged, not without some ground, the ambitious hope that his beautiful sister-in-law, the Lady Sarah Lennox, might be queen of England.  It had been observed that the King at one time rode every morning by the grounds of Holland House, and that on such occasions, Lady Sarah, dressed like a shepherdess at a masquerade, was making hay close to the road, which was then separated by no wall from the lawn.  On account of the part which Fox had taken in this singular love affair, he was the only member of the Privy Council who was not summoned to the meeting at which his Majesty announced his intended marriage with the Princess of Mecklenburg.  Of all the statesmen of the age, therefore, it seemed that Fox was the last with whom Bute the Tory, the Scot, the favourite of the Princess Mother, could, under any circumstances, act.  Yet to Fox Bute was now compelled to apply.

Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in private life shone forth in full lustre, and made him dear to his children, to his dependants, and to his friends; but as a public man he had no title to esteem.  In him the vices which were common to the whole school of Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst, but certainly in their most prominent form; for his parliamentary and official talents made all his faults conspicuous.  His courage, his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil.  He was the most unpopular of the statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than many of them, but because he canted less.

He felt his unpopularity; but he felt it after the fashion of strong minds.  He became, not cautious, but reckless, and faced the rage of the whole nation with a scowl of inflexible defiance.  He was born with a sweet and generous temper; but he had been goaded and baited into a savageness which was not natural to him, and which amazed and shocked those who knew him best.  Such was the man to whom Bute, in extreme need, applied for succour.