consistency which followed upon the offer of the Chancellorship by the
Duke of Grafton to one who was pledged by his previous action to the
Rockingham party. Lord Hardwicke wrote:

'I shall set down on this paper the extraordinary and melancholy
circumstances which attended the offer of the Great Seal to my brother
in January last. On the 12th of that month he received on his return
from Tittenhanger a note from the Duke of Grafton desiring to see him.
He sent it immediately to me and I went to Bloomsbury Square where I met
my brother John and we had a long consultation with Mr. Yorke. He saw
the Duke of Grafton by appointment in the evening and his grace made him
in form and without personal cordiality an offer of the Great Seal,
complaining heavily of Lord Camden's conduct, particularly his hostile
speech in the House of Lords the first day of the Session. My brother
desired a little time to consider of so momentous an affair and stated
to the Duke the difficulties it laid him under, his grace gave him till
Sunday in the forenoon. He, Mr. Y., called on me that morning, the 14th,
and seemed in great perplexity and agitation. I asked him if he saw his
way through the clamorous and difficult points upon which it would be
immediately expected he should give his opinion, viz. the Middlesex
Election, America and the state of Ireland, where the parliament had
just been prorogued on a popular point. He seriously declared that he
did not, and that he might be called upon to advise measures of a higher
and more dangerous nature than he should choose to be responsible for.
He was clearly of opinion that he was not sent for at the present
juncture from predilection, but necessity, and how much soever the Great
Seal had been justly the object of his ambition, he was now afraid of
accepting it.

'Seeing him in so low and fluttered a state of spirits and knowing how