But the King's mind had unfortunately been poisoned by his Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, and influenced by the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and their opinions had been brought to weigh upon the King's decision by artful intrigues before the large and wise view of Mr. Pitt had been allowed to reach him.
Thus prejudiced, he rejected at once the advice of the minister who for seventeen years had possessed his confidence and the support of a large majority in Parliament.
After a compliment to the integrity and talents of Mr. Pitt, the King proceeds:—
But a sense of religious as well as political duty has made me, from the moment I mounted the throne, consider the oath that the wisdom of our forefathers has enjoined the Kings of this realm to take at their Coronation, and enforced by the obligation of instantly following it, in the course of the ceremony, with taking the Sacrament, as so binding a religious obligation in me to maintain the fundamental maxims on which our Constitution is placed namely, the Church of England being the established one, and that those who hold employment in the State must be members of it, and, consequently, obliged not only to take oaths against Popery, but to receive the Holy Communion agreeably to the rites of the Church of England.
After confessing his belief in this strange error as to the sense and meaning of the Coronation Oath, the King shows, in another passage, that he had never understood or concurred in the views of his minister in promoting the Union with Ireland:—
When the Irish Propositions were transmitted to me by a
