ch case
a minor; but in each instance the arrangements which they had made were
disregarded.

However, on the present occasion the minister (who must be taken to have
framed the King's speech) and the Parliament agreed in the propriety of
conferring the nomination of the Regent on the King himself;[16] and the
bill might have passed almost without notice, had it not been for a
strange display of the Prime-minister's ill-temper and mismanagement.
Mr. Grenville was at all times uncourtly and dictatorial in his manner,
even to the King himself; he was also of a suspicious disposition; and
though he was universally believed to have owed his promotion to his
present office to the recommendation of Lord Bute,[17] he was extremely
jealous of his predecessor. He professed to believe, and probably did
believe, that the King was still greatly under Lord Bute's influence
(though, in fact, they had never met since that minister had quitted the
Treasury), that Lord Bute was still as closely connected with the
Princess of Wales as scandal had formerly reported him to be, and that
George III., under the pressure of their combined influence, would be
induced to name his mother rather than his wife as the future Regent.
And he was so entirely swayed by this ridiculous and wholly groundless
fear, that, when the bill to give effect to the royal recommendation was
introduced into the House of Lords, he instigated one of his friends to
raise the question who were included in the general term "the royal
family," which Lord Halifax, as Secretary of State, answered by saying
that he regarded it as meaning "those only who were in order of
succession to the throne." Such a definition would have excluded the
Queen as effectually as the Princess Dowager; and when Mr. Grenville
found the peers reluctant to accept this view (which, indeed, his own
Lord Chancellor pronounced untenable), he then sent another of his
colleagues to represent to the King that his mother was so unpopular
that, even if the Lords should pass the bill in such a form as rendered
her eligible for nomination, the Commons would introduce a clause to
exclude her by name. With great unwillingness, and, it is said, not
without tears, George III. consented to the bill being so drawn as to
exclude her, and it passed the Lords in such a form. But when it reached
the Commons it was found that if the leaders of the Opposition hated
Bute much, they hated Grenville more. They moved the ins