George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[274] controlling influence, he formed a ministry from many

chap. XII.} 1757

factions. Lord Anson, Hardwicke's son-in-law, took again the highest seat at the Board of the Admiralty. Fox, who had children, and had wasted his fortune, accepted the place of paymaster, which the war made enormously lucrative. Newcastle had promised Halifax a new office as third secretary of state for the colonies. ‘I did not speak about it,’ was the duke's apology to him; ‘Pitt looked so much out of humor, I dared not.’¹ And the disappointed man railed without measure at the knavery and cowardice of Newcastle.² But Pitt reconciled him by leaving him his old post in the Board of Trade, with all its patronage, adding the dignity of a cabinet councillor. Henley, afterwards Lord Northington, became Lord Chancellor, opening the way for Sir Charles Pratt to be made Attorney-General, and George Grenville was Treasurer of the Navy. The illustrious statesman himself, the ablest his country had seen since Cromwell, whom he surpassed in the grandeur and in the integrity of his ambition, being resolved on making England the greatest nation in the world, and himself its greatest minister, took the seals of the Southern Department, with the conduct of the war in all parts of the globe. With few personal friends, with no considerable party, and an aversion to. the exercise of patronage, he left to Newcastle the first seat at the Treasury Board, with the disposition of bishoprics, petty offices, and contracts, and the management of ‘all the classes of venality.’³ At that day, the good will of the people was, in England,