regarded as his particular creature.[1] To his great indignation Calcraft supported Shelburne, and declared that rather than give any other answer he would leave the Office.[2] "I have had a very long and very firm conversation with Mr. Fox about the Pay Office," he writes to Shelburne, "and gave him my reasons for quitting it as sincerely as I feel them. Lady Holland was by and they made impressions upon her. They were not without effect on him, though he would not give way. His brother talked to him all last night to keep his place, and said your Lordship and I should yield to reason. I replied that reason was with us, that money was more Lord Ilchester's consideration than we wish'd it, and that he who liv'd out of the world was not the fittest judge what would please in it; in short, I did my best and will for Mr. Fox's sake continue my persuasion to a measure on which his credit so much depends. I stated this advice to Lord Bute and the comparison that would be drawn, that people would say he was afraid to leave the Office open to inspection, &c. Rigby promises me to speak to Mr. Fox to-night his opinion, which is strong with us."[3]
Before his audience with the King, Fox had cast about how to extricate himself from the difficulty in which he found himself, and began by settling on a scheme to be found in a memorandum submitted by him to Bute, which ran as follows:[4]
"My opinion cannot, and ought not to stand in the way of His Majesty's interest or conscience. But with regard to my private honour and feelings it must be absolute. Had I been consulted I would have found some way of reconciling His Majesty's wishes with my opinion: but that has not been the case, and I am supposed out of my employment, without being myself allowed to be a party to my own resignation. I cannot
- ↑ Calcraft began as a clerk in the War Office on £40 a year, where he gained a great reputation. He was then transferred to the Pay Office, which he left in consequence of the transactions detailed above. He subsequently became Commissary-General of Musters, and is well known as the devoted follower of Pitt in later years.
- ↑ Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., i. 262.
- ↑ Calcraft to Shelburne, March 15th, 1763.
- ↑ Paper endorsed "Pay Office." March 1763.
