ments. Grenville hesitated, and advised the king to wait until the Christmas recess. On the 24th Conway voted against the government on the question of Wilkes's privilege. In the hope of smoothing matters over and keeping him from joining the opposition Grenville arranged a meeting with him on 4 Dec., which, by Conway's demand, took place in the presence of the Duke of Richmond. Conway refused to give any pledge of support to the government, and on 14 and 17 Feb. spoke and voted against the legality of ‘general warrants.’ For this offence the king and the minister not only dismissed him from his post in the household, but deprived him of his regiment (Grenville Papers, ii. 162, 166, 229, 321–7). Other officers were treated in the same high-handed fashion. Conway's dismissal was not made known until the house rose in April. The loss of income caused him considerable inconvenience. Walpole at once offered him 6,000l., and shortly afterwards the Duke of Devonshire wished him to accept 1,000l. a year until he was restored to his command. He refused both offers, and the duke, who died shortly afterwards, left him a legacy of 5,000l. The case for the government appears to have been stated in an ‘Address to the Public on the Dismission of a General Officer’ in the ‘Gazetteer’ of 9 May. This was answered, though without much ability, by H. Walpole in ‘A Counter-Address,’ &c., published 12 Aug., which called forth a singularly poor answer entitled ‘A Reply to the Counter-Address,’ all in 1764. The case roused a determined spirit of resistance in the whigs, and Lord Rockingham went down to Hayes in the hope of inducing Pitt to take part in this opposition. Pitt condemned the dismissal, but ‘considered the question touched too near upon prerogative’ (Rockingham Memoirs, i. 180).
On 8 July 1765 the king was forced to accept the administration formed by the Marquis of Rockingham, in which Conway was secretary of state, in conjunction with the Duke of Grafton, and leader of the House of Commons. Conway accepted office somewhat unwillingly at the command of the Duke of Cumberland; he took the southern department, and employed William Burke [q. v.] as his private secretary. The accession of the Rockingham ministry to office ‘abolished the dangerous and unconstitutional practice of removing military officers for their votes in parliament’ (Burke, Short Account). In order to allay the irritation of the American colonies the government determined on the repeal of the Stamp Act, seeking at the same time to save the honour of the country by an act declaratory of the rights of parliament. Conway moved the repeal in February 1766, and, in spite of the intrigues of the king and the opposition of the late ministry, succeeded in gaining a majority. Referring to his triumph on this occasion, Burke in after years said: ‘I stood near him, and his face, to use the expression of the Scriptures of the first martyr, his face was as it were the face of an angel’ (‘On American Taxation,’ Works, iii. 206). On every account the king disliked the Rockingham administration, and on 7 July he acquainted the ministers severally that he had sent for Pitt. On the 13th Pitt, who had undertaken to form an administration with Grafton as first lord of the treasury and himself as privy seal, with the title of the Earl of Chatham, offered Conway the post of secretary of state for the northern department (instead of for the southern department of which he was secretary already) with the leadership of the house. The Duke of Richmond tried to dissuade him from accepting the offer. The strength of the Rockingham whigs, such as it was, consisted to no small extent in the fact that their party was founded on a strict aristocratic alliance, and this the king and Pitt, each from a different motive, were determined to break. The duke pointed out that Conway's acceptance would further this design, hinting at his obligation to the late Duke of Devonshire. On the other hand, it was probable that, if he refused, the leadership of the house would go to Grenville, and to prevent this Walpole urged him to accept; he did so, and with seven others of Rockingham's followers, continued in office under the new administration. His conduct cannot be judged by the unwritten laws which regulate the party politics of the present day. The question presented to him was not one of measures, and the separation between the whig sections was as yet rather a matter of cabal than of party. Rockingham appears to have felt some soreness, not so much at Conway's acceptance, but because he did not consider that he made a stand for his followers, many of whom, like himself, were displaced by Chatham. Conway was still held to belong to the Rockingham whigs, and formed ‘the connecting link between the two parties’ (Rockingham Memoirs, ii. 18). He soon grew discontented with the violent measures adopted by Chatham for ‘the breaking-up of parties,’ and especially at the dismissal of Lord Edgcumbe, one of the old whigs who had four boroughs at his disposal, from the treasurership of the household, and in November had an interview with Rockingham on the subject. Rockingham pointed out that it was evident that Chatham disre-
