en to the verge of
another revolution.

And now the supplies had been voted. The spring was brightening and
blooming into summer. The lords and squires were sick of London; and
the King was sick of England. On the fourth day of May he prorogued the
Houses with a speech very different from the speeches with which he had
been in the habit of dismissing the preceding Parliament. He uttered not
one word of thanks or praise. He expressed a hope that, when they should
meet again, they would make effectual provision for the public safety.
"I wish," these were his concluding words, "no mischief may happen in
the mean time." The gentlemen who thronged the bar withdrew in wrath,
and, as they could not take immediate vengeance, laid up his reproaches
in their hearts against the beginning of the next session.

The Houses had broken up; but there was still much to be done before the
King could set out for Loo. He did not yet perceive that the true way
to escape from his difficulties was to form an entirely new ministry
possessing the confidence of the majority which had, in the late
session, been found so unmanageable. But some partial changes he could
not help making. The recent votes of the Commons forced him seriously
to consider the state of the Board of Admiralty. It was impossible that
Orford could continue to preside at that Board and be at the same time
Treasurer of the Navy. He was offered his option. His own wish was to
keep the Treasurership, which was both the more lucrative and the more
secure of his two places. But it was so strongly represented to him that
he would disgrace himself by giving up great power for the sake of gains
which, rich and childless as he was, ought to have been beneath his
consideration, that he determined to remain at the Admiralty. He seems
to have thought that the sacrifice which he had made entitled him to
govern despotically the department at which he had been persuaded to
remain. But he soon found that the King was determined to keep in his
own hands the power of appointing and removing the junior Lords. One of
these Lords, especially, the First Commissioner hated, and was bent on
ejecting, Sir George Rooke, who was Member of Parliament for Portsmouth.
Rooke was a brave and skilful officer, and had, therefore, though a Tory
in politics, been suffered to keep his place during the ascendency of
the Whig junto. Orford now complained to the King that Rooke had been
in correspondence with the f