he had no such intention, and "was resolved to go to the King to assure him he never had a thought of resigning."[1] Shelburne immediately hurried to see Fox. The result of this interview he described as follows to Bute:
"Mr. Fox tells me this day he is determined to keep the Pay Office, and be a peer. He intends going tomorrow morning, and desired to know of me whether he should mention his brother, in answer to which I could say nothing more than I had already said from your Lordship on that head. He likewise wished to know, how he stood with the King and you, to which I very frankly told him my opinion, that it depended on the dignity and the grace of his going out, which depended again on his going lightly loaded. Calcraft is as much vexed as I am, and thinks it depends a great deal on your representing to him with firmness, how unreasonable it is for him to expect to go to the House of Lords, and to go abroad with a great place, and £10,000 a year for himself, his brother, and Lord Digby,[2] and that that will not fail to change matters, whatever appearance they make at present. I write your Lordship these loose thoughts, in order to inform you fully of this serious and very interested transaction, for it is nothing more or less than Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo.
"I wish you may be at leisure to see him, only you'll be so good to inform me of your resolution, that we may not afterwards appear more unkind than necessary.
"Upon the whole I see no end to my being heartily sorry for your Lordship's going out, though I admire the manner of it, and feel for the contempt with which you must see the interested views that follow you so close."[3]
Fox now once more sought the advice of his cousin Calcraft, who was then in the Pay Office, and generally
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, March 1763.
- ↑ In April 1763 Lord Digby, Fox's brother-in-law, was made a Lord of the Admiralty with £1000 a year, and his brother Lord Ilchester, one of the Comptrollers of Army Accounts, with£ 750 a year. Fox had also in October 1762 himself succeeded to the Writership of the Tallies and Clerkship of the Rolls in Ireland, as already stated above. On his death it passed to Charles Fox. (Walpole, Correspondence, iii. 69, and Rowley Lascelles, Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniæ.)
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, March 22nd, 1763.
