lacemen and contractors, obtained a majority of 10,
which was reduced afterwards to 9 on a vote of confidence. The crisis
had now arrived. The Earl of Surrey had given notice in the Lords of a
motion to the effect that Ministers no longer possessed the confidence
of the country, when Lord North entered the House, and informed their
Lordships that His Majesty had come to a determination to make an entire
change of Administration.

This was on the 19th of March. But so far back as the 11th His Majesty
had been in negotiation with the Marquis of Rockingham, through the
agency of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who detained his Lordship in the
House for an hour and a half after it had adjourned to converse with
him, by His Majesty's desire, upon the practicability of forming an
Administration "on a broad bottom." The negotiation with Thurlow spread
over an entire week, and entirely failed on the plan proposed by His
Majesty, who wished to limit Lord Rockingham in the first instance to
the nomination of a Cabinet whose policy should lie over for future
consideration. "I must confess," observes Lord Rockingham, in one of his
letters to the Lord Chancellor, "that I do not think it an advisable
measure, first to attempt to form a Ministry by arrangement of
office--afterwards to decide upon what principles or measures they are
to act."

The day this letter was written Lord North resigned; and in two days
afterwards His Majesty renewed the negotiation with Lord Rockingham,
finally agreeing to the whole of his propositions, and reserving only
the household in his own hands. While these negotiations were in
progress, Lord Temple wrote to Lord Rockingham, expressing his earnest
hope that the "cards should be dealt only into those hands where he so
much wished them, from every motive of public and private regard."
Before the end of the month the cards _were_ dealt into the hands in
which Lord Temple wished to see them, and the new Ministry was
completed, with Lord Rockingham as First Lord of the Treasury; Lord
Shelburne and Mr. Fox as Secretaries of State; Lord John Cavendish,
Chancellor of the Exchequer; Admiral Keppel, at the head of the
Admiralty; General Conway (much to the King's dissatisfaction), at the
Horse Guards; with the additional strength of the Dukes of Richmond and
Grafton, and Lords Camden and Ashburton, Burke, Sheridan, and Colonel
Barre, in other offices; Thurlow (the only Tory in the Cabinet) still
continuing as Lord Ch