attempts to seduce me from my allegiance.”  William did not deny this, but intimated that such secret dealings with noted Jacobites raised suspicions which Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting the seals.  “That,” he said, “will put me quite at ease.  I know that you are a man of honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve me faithfully.”  So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy of his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance with a dukedom and a garter.529

Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming.  There were now two Whig Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a Whig First Lord of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The Lord Privy Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a Whig; for his mind was one which readily took the impress of any stronger mind with which it was brought into contact.  Seymour, having been long enough a Commissioner of the Treasury to lose much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen who had once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and his place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had taken an active part in the debates of the late session.530 The only Tories who still held great offices in the executive government were the Lord President, Caermarthen, who, though he began to feel that power was slipping from his grasp, still clutched it desperately, and the first Lord of the Treasury, Godolphin, who meddled little out of his own department, and performed the duties of that department with skill and assiduity.

William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the two parties.  Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the substance of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary distinctions.  Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted his great parliamentary talents in favour of the King’s policy, was created Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor, but was never consulted.  He obtained at the same time a pension of three thousand pounds a year.  Caermarthen, whom the late changes had deeply mortified, was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation.  He became Duke of Leeds.  It had taken him little more than twenty years to climb from the station of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest rank in the peerage.  Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire.  It ought to be mentioned that Bedford had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat reluctantly accepted.  He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom, and gave a very sensible reason for the preference.  An Earl who had a numerous family might send one son to the Temple and another to a counting house in the city.  But the sons of a Duke were all lords; and a lord could not make his bread either at the bar or on Change.  The old man’s objections, however, were overcome; and the two great houses of Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by friendship and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and common triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it is in the power of the Crown to confer.531