ence hoped, that if
another attack like the last Rebellion should be made on the Royal
Family, they would all stand by them. No reply was made to this. Then
Sir Watkyn Williams spoke, Sir Francis Dashwood,[2] and Tom Pitt, and
the meeting broke up. I don't know what this coalition may produce: it
will require time with no better heads than compose it at present,
though the great Mr. Dodington had carried to the conference the
assistance of his. In France a very favourable event has happened for
us, the disgrace of Maurepas,[3] one of our bitterest enemies, and the
greatest promoter of their marine. Just at the beginning of the war, in
a very critical period, he had obtained a very large sum for that
service, but which one of the other factions, lest he should gain glory
and credit by it, got to be suddenly given away to the King of Prussia.

[Footnote 1: Dr. King was Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and one
of the chief supports of the Jacobite party after 1745.]

[Footnote 2: Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1761, through the influence
of the Earl of Bute. He was the owner of Medmenham Abbey, on the Thames,
and as such, the President of the profligate Club whose doings were made
notorious by the proceedings against Wilkes, and who, in compliment to
him, called themselves the Franciscans.]

[Footnote 3: The Comte de Maurepas was the grandson of the Chancellor of
France, M. de Pontchartrain. When only fourteen years old Louis had made
him Secretary of State for the Marine, as a consolation to his
grandfather for his dismissal; and he continued in office till the
accession of Louis XVI., when he was appointed Prime Minister. He was
not a man of any statesmanlike ability; but Lacretelle ascribes to him
"les graces d'un esprit aimable et frivole qui avait le don d'amuser un
vieillard toujours porte a un elegant badinage" (ii. 53); and in a
subsequent letter speaks of him as a man of very lively powers of
conversation.]

Sir Charles Williams[1] is appointed envoy to this last King: here is an
epigram which he has just sent over on Lord Egmont's opposition to the
Mutiny Bill:

Why has Lord Egmont 'gainst this bill
So much declamatory skill
So tediously exerted?
The reason's plain: but t'other day
He mutinied himself for pay,
And he has twice deserted.

[Footnote 1: Sir Charles Hanbury Williams had represented Monmouth in
Parliament, but in 1744 was sent as ambassador to Berlin, and fr