peace of Paris was impending. His uncle having died intestate, he was disappointed of a legacy of 5,000l. that he expected, and was left without means. He was befriended by William Strahan [q.v.], at whose house he met people of influence and literary distinction. Interest was made for him, and he was appointed a clerk in the record office of the exchequer at Westminster. While holding this place he was in 1767 called upon to attend a committee of the lords with reference to printing the early records of their house. The chairman, Lord Marchmont, finding his services of value, procured his employment by the committee; an office was formed for him, and the whole series of the lords' proceedings was printed under his direction. The keepership of the records falling vacant in 1772, the committee recommended him for it, and he received that office, which he held at first jointly with another, and afterwards alone. The lords' committee praised his work in an address to the king, presented with their report, and in 1777 Lord North appointed him secretary to the board of taxes, an office which brought him about 900l. a year.
During the Rockingham administration of 1782 he gave much help to the chancellor of the exchequer, Lord John Cavendish [q. v.], and on Shelburne's [see Petty, William, Marquis of Landsdowne] accession to power in July, was appointed a secretary to the treasury, resigning his place in the tax office and a small office in the exchequer. He thus gave up a permanent and valuable situation for one that, though more honourable, was exceedingly precarious. As he distrusted Shelburne, whom he disliked personally, he refused to enter parliament, though a seat was offered him by the minister. The income of the secretaries to the treasury was fixed by him at 3,000l. a year, the fees from which it had hitherto proceeded being brought into the general fund for the payment of the salaries in the department. Through the influence of Lord Marchmont and other lords he obtained a grant in reversion of the valuable office of clerk of the parliaments. He went out of office with Shelburne in April 1783, and shortly afterwards had an open quarrel with him (ib. p. 30). He informed Pitt of his dissatisfaction with Shelburne, and did not at the time receive any answer of a confidential character. He was, he says, 'left completely upon the pavement' (ib. p. 28); but he retained his place in the journals office, and had some private income from property in the West Indies, which seems to have come to him by his marriage. While on a tour on the continent, in company with Lord Thurlow, he received a letter from Pitt requesting him to meet him in Paris. They met in October, and Pitt enlisted him as one of his supporters. Rose returned to England after the interview. When Pitt took office, Rose was on 27 Dec. reappointed secretary to the treasury, with Thomas Steele as his colleague, and at the general election in the spring of 1784 was returned to parliament for Launceston in Cornwall, through the influence of the Duke of Northumberland, with whose son, Lord Percy [see Percy, Hugh, first Duke of Northumberland], he was on terms of friendship. Thenceforward Rose was Pitt's intimate friend and faithful follower. Pitt found his industry and remarkable ability in finance extremely useful, employed him largely as a means of communicating with others, and specially in matters of patronage, which were included in Rose's sphere of official duty. Both in and out of parliament Rose gave his chief all the support in his power, and heartily concurred with him in all questions of policy, with the exception of his attempt at parliamentary reform, his efforts for the abolition of the slave trade, and his approval of the peace of Amiens.
In April 1784 Rose supplied the king with information as to the progress of the general election, and gained his goodwill; indeed the regard which the king showed for him, and the confidence with which he afterwards treated him, have caused Rose to be reckoned, not quite accurately, among those personal adherents of George III who were called 'the king's friends.' Pitt took an early opportunity of rewarding him by the grant of the office of master of the pleas in the court of exchequer for life (ib. i. 15). About this time Rose purchased of the heirs of Sir Thomas Tancred a house and place called Cuffnells, near Lyndhurst, Hampshire, which thenceforward became his principal residence (Brayley and Britton, Beauties of England and Wales, vi. 178). He also had a small house at Christchurch, and gradually obtained complete possession of the borough (Wraxall, Memoirs, iii. 455). In March 1788 he was elected verderer of the New Forest, and in June succeeded to the place of clerk of the parliaments {Annual Register, 1788, xxx. 228-9). This vacated his seat in parliament, and, as his friendship with the new Duke of Northumberland was broken, he accepted a seat for Lymington, Hampshire, for the remainder of the session. The journals office which had been created for him was absorbed into his new department, and he received in exchange for its emoluments a pension to his wife for life of 300l.
