At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and
quarrels.72 Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but,
though they held the same political creed, their tempers differed
widely. Mordaunt was volatile, dissipated, and generous. The wits
of that time laughed at the way in which he flew about from
Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from the Royal Exchange
back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress, politics,
lovemaking and balladmaking was a wonder.73 Delamere was gloomy
and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in
his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal
ministers of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only
in hating their colleague Godolphin. What business had he at
Whitehall in these days of Protestant ascendency, he who had sate
at the same board with Papists, he who had never scrupled to
attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous worship of the Mass? The
most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin, though his name
stood only third in the commission, was really first Lord. For in
financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and
Delamere were mere children when compared with him; and this
William soon discovered.74

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the
subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse,
in every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere
and a Godolphin. The Whigs complained that there was no
department in which creatures of the fallen tyranny were not to
be found. It was idle to allege that these men were versed in the
details of business, that they were the depositaries of official
traditions, and that the friends of liberty, having been, during