ABSTRACT
On 15 December 1783 CharlesJames Fox's bill to reorganize government and administration in India was defeated by eight votes in the House of Lords. Three days later, following a second adverse vote, George III, who had been fostering opposition to his own ministers in the Lords, dismissed the 'infamous' Fox-North coalition. Eight months earlier the King had accepted only with the most profound reluctance the necessity for such a ministry, an ill-assorted alliance between Lord North, the King's faithful servant from the 1770s, and the Rockingham Whigs, his most steadfast critics. His detestation of it never wavered and he now gave it immediate notice with a deep sense of satisfaction. 1 The Rockinghams took what they saw as this unwanted exercise of royal prerogative with aplomb. They believed their control of Parliament secure enough to prevent the formation of any alternative ministry not favourable to them. They awaited the trial of constitutional strength in the belief that the King's powers of appointment and dismissal of ministers would be revealed as an empty sham. The world would be safe for Rockingham Whigs; the King would be openly declared a cipher, a reluctant tool of the most politically determined faction among the great aristocratic families.
