dicated the exercise of the prerogative in the cession of the Floridas. On the coalition of Fox and North, the former insisted on Thurlow's resignation, and, the king at length yielding, Thurlow retired with a pension of 2,680l. and the reversion (which fell in in 1786) of a tellership in the exchequer, and the great seal was put in commission (9 April 1783) [see Wedderburn, Alexander, first Earl of Rosslyn]. In opposition Thurlow resisted in vain the concession of exclusive jurisdiction to the Irish courts and House of Lords. He continued to be consulted by the king, and it was by his advice that the royal mind in regard to the India Bill was communicated to the peers (Buckingham, Courts and Cabinets of George III, i. 227, 289; FOX, Corresp. ed. Russell, ii. 47, 61 et seq., 251 et seq.). On the consequent defeat of that measure the king sent for Pitt, and Thurlow resumed the great seal (23 Dec.), which on the eve of the dissolution (23–24 March 1784) was stolen from his house in Great Ormonde Street. If, as was surmised, the robbery was concerted by political malcontents in the hope of deferring the dissolution, they were signally disappointed. A new seal was hastily cast, and parliament dissolved on 25 March. The lost seal was never recovered, nor were the burglars traced (Gent. Mag. 1784, i. 230, 378).
On his return from the country with a solid majority, Pitt for some sessions found in Thurlow a fairly loyal supporter; though the chancellor asserted his freedom by opposing the bill for restoring forfeited estates to the descendants of the Jacobite insurgents of 1745 (16 Aug. 1784). Thurlow also warmly espoused the royal scheme for raising Warren Hastings to the peerage, of which Pitt doubted the expediency. He even talked of affixing the great seal to the patent by the mere authority of the king—a step which was averted by the unexpected sanction given by Pitt to the proposed peer's impeachment. At the trial, which began on 13 Feb. 1788, Thurlow presided so long as he held the great seal, and by the consent of all contemporaries nobly sustained the dignity of British justice. With Pitt his relations became less and less cordial. Pitt's attitude towards slavery disgusted him, and he resented his insistence on the advancement of Richard Pepper Arden (afterwards Baron Alvanley) [q. v.] to the mastership of the rolls (4 June 1788) (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. v. 425). During the discussions on the regency question (November 1788) he entered into clandestine negotiations with the Prince of Wales and the whigs (Egerton MS. 2232, ff. 73–7). The discovery of his hat in the prince's closet during a council held at Windsor revealed his intrigues to Pitt, who entrusted Lord Camden with the exposition of his scheme. Meanwhile Thurlow found himself almost equally distrusted by Fox, and as soon as the king's health began to mend gave an ostentatious support to the ministerial proposals. He even affixed the great seal to a fictitious commission for the opening of the parliament to which they were to be submitted (Buckingham, Court and Cabinets of George III, i. 435, ii. 23–4; Stanhope, Life of Pitt, i. 378–403).
Conscious that he was distrusted by Pitt, Thurlow keenly resented the elevation of William Wyndham Grenville [q. v.] to the peerage; but dissembled his feelings while he waited the opportunity of dealing a fatal blow at the great minister. He thus supported Pitt's foreign policy even when least defensible, as in the threatening attitude towards Russia (29 March 1791), while he attempted to terminate the impeachment of Hastings on the technical ground that it had abated by the dissolution of the parliament in which it had been instituted, and succeeded in throwing out Fox's libel bill.
Having thus done his best to perpetuate the virtual abrogation of trial by jury in cases in which it was really the palladium of British liberty, he took occasion to pose as its most ardent champion in a charge to the jury of the pix, in which he animadverted severely on an innocent proposal of the chancellor of the exchequer to dispense with it in certain proceedings under the revenue laws. The unfortunate Sinking Fund Bill he opposed with an adroitness which almost secured its defeat. At the same time he so far lost his self-command as to to treat Lord Grenville with discourtesy. Pitt and Grenville thereupon required the king to choose between them and the chancellor, and it was arranged, 18 to 21 May 1792, that Thurlow should retire. He did so on the prorogation (15 June), the only token of favour which he received being a patent (dated 11 June) creating him Baron Thurlow of Thurlow, Suffolk, with remainder to the heirs male of his nephews (Buckingham, Court and Cabinets of George III, ii. 208–10; Rose, Diaries, i. 95–9). Thenceforth Thurlow was rarely heard in debate, though he continued to take part in the judicial business of the House of Lords, and now and again intervened in the parliamentary wrangles to which the trial of Hastings continued to give rise.
