Hurd, Garrick and other friends, and corresponding among others with
Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, to whom he had been introduced by
his brother Sir Joseph. Gradually, however, Chatham made a recovery from
the mental disease under which he had been labouring, and in January
1770 he returned to the political arena with two vigorous speeches in
the House of Lords. His first speech spread consternation among the
members of the Government and the King's party, led by the Duke of
Grafton, who had assumed the duties of Prime Minister; and one of the
first effects of his intervention was the resignation of Lord Camden,
who had adhered to Chatham, and openly denounced the Duke of Grafton's
arbitrary measures. This event placed the Court party in the utmost
difficulty, and no lawyer of sufficient eminence was available for the
post but Charles Yorke, who thus suddenly found within his reach the
high office which had been the ambition of his life. The crisis was his
undoing, and the whole story is of such interest from a family point of
view, that, although it is well known from the brilliant pages of Sir
George Trevelyan's 'Life of Fox,' I may be excused for telling it again,
mainly in the words of two important memoranda preserved at the British
Museum.

One of these was written by Charles Yorke's brother, the second Lord
Hardwicke, and dated nearly a year later, December 30, 1770; the other,
dated October 20, 1772, by his widow Agneta Yorke; and the effect of
them, to my mind, is not only to discredit the widely believed story of
Charles Yorke's suicide, which is not even alluded to, but also to place
his action from a public and political point of view in a more
favourable light than that in which it is sometimes presented.

Both the 'Memorials' to which I have alluded give a most vivid and
painful account of the struggle between ambition and political