f-denying ordinance. But the
mistake was fatal, irreparable. The country did not insist on having
him back at any price; the country did not seem to have been thinking
about him at all. Now, when there seemed to be {244} something like a
new opportunity opening for him on the death of Lord Wilmington, he had
the weakness to consent to be put up as a candidate for the position of
Prime-minister. The effort proved a failure. The Pelhams were not
only powerful in themselves, but they were powerful also in the support
of Walpole. Walpole still had great influence over the King, and he
naturally threw all that influence into the scale of the men who
represented his own policy, and not into the scale of those who
represented the policy of his enemies. Walpole and the Pelhams carried
the day; Henry Pelham became Prime-minister, and from that time the
power of Carteret was gone. This was in 1743--we are now going back a
little to take up threads which had to be dropped in order to deal with
the events springing out of the continental war, and especially the
rebellion in Scotland--and in November, 1744, Carteret was driven to
resign his office. He had just become Earl Granville by the death of
his mother, and was exiled to the House of Lords.

The King, however, still kept up his desire to get back Lord Granville
and to get rid of the Pelhams. George had sense enough to despise the
two brothers, and sense enough also to see when he could not do without
them. During the February of 1746, while the Stuart rebellion was
still aflame, a ministerial crisis came on. The Pelhams wished to
bring Pitt into the Ministry; the King blankly refused. But the King
did more than that: he began to negotiate privately with Lord Granville
and Lord Bath. The Pelhams knew their strength. They at once threw up
their offices; the whole Ministry resigned in a body. The King found
that Carteret could not possibly form an administration which would
have any support worth a moment's consideration in either House of
Parliament. The fortunes of Charles Stuart were still looking bright
in the north, and the King found himself without a Ministry. There was
no course open to him but one, and that was to recognize the strength
of the Pelhams and their followers, and to take back Newcastle and his
{245} brother on any terms the conquerors might be pleased to dictate.
The Pelhams came back to what might almost be called absolute power.
The King