he could not, in justice to his Ministers,
hold any communication with him unknown to them, when Lord Bute
said that he would never see the King again. The King became
angry in his turn, and said, 'Then, my Lord, be it so, and
remember from henceforth we never meet again.' And from that day
he never beheld Lord Bute or had any communication with him.

1827.

[Page Head: DEATH OF THE DUKE OF YORK.]

Friday night, January 5th, 1827, half-past one {p.084}

I am just come from taking my last look at the poor Duke.[6] He
expired at twenty minutes after nine. Since eleven o'clock last
night the physicians never left his room. He never moved, and
they repeatedly thought that life was extinct, but it was not
till that hour that they found it was all over. The Duke of
Sussex and Stephenson were in the next room; Taylor, Torrens and
Dighton, Armstrong and I were upstairs. Armstrong and I had been
there about half an hour when they came and whispered something
to Dighton and called out Taylor. Dighton told Torrens and they
went out; immediately after Taylor came up, and told us it was
all over and begged we would go downstairs. We went directly into
the room. The Duke was sitting exactly as at the moment he died,
in his great arm-chair, dressed in his grey dressing-gown, his
head inclined against the side of the chair, his hands lying
before him, and looking as if he were in a deep and quiet sleep.
Not a vestige of pain was perceptible on his countenance, which,
except being thinner, was exactly such as I have seen it a
hundred times during his life. In fact, he had not suffered at
all, and had expired with all the ease and tranquillity which the
serenity of his countenance betokened. Nothing about or around
him had the semblance of death; it was all like quiet repose, and
it was not without a melancholy satisfaction we saw such evident
signs of the tranquillity of his last moments.

[6] [His Royal Highness the Duke of York, second son of
King George III., died on the 5th of January, 1827.]

In about a quarter of an hour Taylor and Halford set off to
Windsor to inform the King; the Duke of Sussex went to the
Princess Sophia; letters were written to all the Cabinet
Ministers, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London,
and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Orders were given that
the great bell of St. Paul's should toll. The servants were then
admitted to see t