ABSTRACT
In his haste to get rid of Pitt and his friends George II had hardly given a thought to their successors. After some difficulty Winchelsea, chief of Carteret’s black funereal Finches, consented to take the Admiralty, but ‘without joy,’ and in the frame of mind in which he would have ‘put himself at the head of a company of grenadiers, if ordered to do so by the King.’ Others were less complaisant. Even Fox and Dodington excused themselves from kissing hands for the Pay Office and Treasurership of the Navy, the two most lucrative posts in the Ministry. For three months of this critical year the Exchequer and Pitt’s department, where most of the business of the war was transacted, were in the hands of caretakers—Chief Justice Mansfield and Holderness, Pitt’s fellow-secretary. The affairs of the country were almost at a standstill, since the ministers who remained in office were too solicitous about their own predicament to pay much attention to the nation’s. For the second time George II had withdrawn his confidence from ministers in the middle of a serious war without being able to replace them. 1 It was chiefly due to Pitt that the country’s interests did not suffer more on this occasion. During the winter months he had made all plans and issued all orders for the summer campaign, leaving little for the home Government to do but keep the different services up to the mark.
