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The head of the treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of letters, and Johnson was one of the most eminent, and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and with very little hesitation accepted.
The Duke of Newcastle in especial was irritated by the use of the word "Briton," and the evidence it forced upon him of his own waning influence and the waxing power of Bute.
The slinger of this first resounding little missile, Walpole informs us, was "one Mauduit, formerly a Dissenting Teacher," son of a Dissenting Minister in Bermondsey, I hear, and perhaps himself once a Preacher, but at present concerned with Factorage of Wool on the great scale; got soon afterwards promoted to be Head of the Custom-house in Southampton, so lovely did he seem to Bute and Company.
"Young man," said he to Kenric, "I know not who you are, but by the circle of dead men now lying about you, and by the prowess whereby you have saved the lives of these three children, I judge that you can be none other than the young king of Bute." "That, sir, is so," said Kenric, wiping his sword upon a mossy stone and sheathing it. "And who are you, my master?"
Still greater fame accrued to him, however, from his portrait of Lord Bute, who was reputed to possess the handsomest leg in England.
The plot thickens: Mr. Wilkes is sent to the Tower for the last North Briton; a paper whose fame must have reached you. It said Lord Bute had made the King utter a gross falsehood in his last speech.
She says that she has left all her clothes at Venice. I really pity Lady Bute; what will the progress be of such a commencement! John's, Clerkenwell, where the body of the supposed victim was buried. Her story caused such excitement, that at last Dr. Johnson, Dr. Wortley, our ambassador at Constantinople. She was the most accomplished lady of the eighteenth century.
And if, as her friend Lady Bute asserts, Amelia also is Mrs Fielding's portrait, then we know her no less intimately as wife and mother.
No wonder the prince, looking from the windows of Holland House, thought it a delightful exhibition of Arcadian simplicity and made haste to chat with her. But love-making between the future king and a subject was not in accordance with the princess dowager's ideas, and so Earl Bute found it convenient to appear upon the scene, a gentle hint that there was to be no more love-making.
Plans for the regulation of the government of the Colonies had been suggested from time to time by subordinate ministers, but they had been set aside alike by the prudence of Walpole and the generosity of Pitt. The appointment of Charles Townshend to the Presidency of the Board of Trade however was a sign that Bute had adopted a policy not only of taxation, but of restraint.
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