“In consequence of these intrigues, the King agreed to send for Lord Wilmington, and to place him at the head of the ministry.  It is remarkable that this man, who was a mere cipher, should have been again had recourse to, after his failure in making a government at the very commencement of the reign of George the Second, when his manifest incapacity, and the influence of Queen Caroline, had occasioned the remaining of his opponent Sir Robert Walpole in power.  With Lord Wilmington came in Lord Harrington, as president of the council; Lord Gower, as privy seal; Lord Winchilsea, as first lord of the admiralty; Lord Carteret as secretary of state; the other secretary being the Duke of Newcastle, who had been so under Walpole; Lord Hardwicke continued chancellor; and Samuel Sandys was made chancellor of the exchequer.  Several of the creatures of Pulteney obtained minor offices:  but he himself, hampered by his abandonment of many of his former friends, took no place; but Only obtained a promise of an earldom, whenever he might wish for it.

“These arrangements produced, as was natural, a great schism in the different parties, which broke out at a meeting at the Fountain Tavern, on the 12th of February, where the Duke of Argyll declared himself in opposition to the new government, upon the ground of the unjust exclusion of the Tories.  The Duke of Argyll subsequently relented, and kissed hands for the master-generalship of the ordnance, upon the understanding, that Sir John Hinde Cotton, a notorious Jacobite, was to have a place.  This the King refused; upon which the Duke finally subsided into Opposition.  Lord Stair had the ordnance, and Lord Cobham was made a field-marshal and commander of the forces in England.  This latter event happened at the end of the session of 1742, when Lord Gower and Lord Bathurst, and one or two other Jacobites, were promoted.  It was at this period (July, 1742), that the King, by the advice of Sir Robert Walpole, who saw that such a step would complete the degradation Of Pulteney, insisted upon his taking out the patent for his earldom and quitting the House of Commons; which he did with the greatest unwillingness.

“On the death of Lord Wilmington, in July 1743, Mr. Pelham was made first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer (from which office Sandys was dismissed), by the advice of Sir Robert Walpole, and instead of Lord Bath, who now found that his adversary had really turned the key upon him, (3) and that the door of the cabinet was never to be unlocked to him.  The ministry was at this time, besides its natural feebleness, rent by internal dissensions; for Lord Carteret, who, as secretary of state, had accompanied the King abroad in 1743, had acquired great influence over his royal master,-and trusting to this, and to the superiority of his talents over his colleagues, his insolence to them became unbounded.  The timid and time-serving Pelhams were quite ready to