ABSTRACT
The envoy entrusted with Lord Rockingham’s appeal was Nuthall, Mr. Pitt’s friend, whom Rockingham had made Solicitor to the Treasury. Pitt who wanted an altogether freer hand, announced that he was willing to treat with Rockingham, Grafton and Conway, the Ministerial negotiators suggested by Rockingham, but only after the King should have commissioned him. He urged that the type of prior consultation, suggested by Rockingham, was unfair to the King but, in doing so, he virtually demanded that Rockingham, without guarantees for the mass of his following, should announce to the King his inability to continue, and his view that Pitt should be summoned. Meanwhile Chatham’s imperious treatment of members of his Government, accustomed under others to being handled rather as colleagues than as subordinates, had produced grave trouble among the Ministers whom he had inherited from the Rockingham Administration.
