Halifax had laid down the Privy Seal. It was offered to Chesterfield, a Tory who had voted in the Convention for a Regency. But Chesterfield refused to quit his country house and gardens in Derbyshire for the Court and the Council Chamber; and the Privy Seal was put into Commission.[1] Caermarthen was now the chief adviser of the Crown on all matters relating to the internal administration and to the management of the two Houses of Parliament. The white staff, and the immense power which accompanied the white staff, William was still determined never to entrust to any subject. Caermarthen therefore, continued to be Lord President; but he took possession of a suite of apartments in Saint James's Palace which was considered as peculiarly belonging to the Prime Minister.[2] He had, during the preceding year, pleaded ill health as an excuse for seldom appearing at the Council Board; and the plea was not without foundation, for his digestive organs had some morbid peculiarities which puzzled the whole College of Physicians; his complexion was livid; his frame was meagre; and his face, handsome and intellectual as it was, had a haggard look which indicated the restlessness of pain as well as the restlessness of ambition.[3] As soon, however, as he was once more minister, he applied himself strenuously to business, and toiled every day, and all day long, with an energy which amazed every body who saw his ghastly countenance and tottering gait.
Though he could not obtain for himself the office of Lord
- ↑ Van Citters, Feb. 14/24, 1689/90; Memoir of the Earl of Chesterfield, by himself; Halifax to Chesterfield, Feb. 6; Chesterfield to Halifax, Feb. 8. The editor of the letters of the second Earl of Chesterfield, not allowing for the change of style, has misplaced this correspondence by a year.
- ↑ Van Citters to the States General, Feb. 11/21, 1690.
- ↑ A strange peculiarity of his constitution is mentioned in an account of him which was published a few months after his death. See the volume entitled "Lives and Characters of the most Illustrious Persons, British and Foreign, who died in the year 1712." So early as the days of Charles the Second, the leanness and ghastliness of Caermarthen were among the favourite topics of Whig satirists. In a ballad entitled the Chequer Inn are these lines.
"He is as stiff as any stake,
And leaner, dick than any rake;
Envy is not so pale;
And though by selling of us all,
He has wrought himself to Whitehall,
He looks like bird of gaol."
