tested
against it being carried across the border. In the course of this
strange progress he reached Inverness in the beginning of September,
1834, and was presented by the magistrates with the freedom of their
city. In returning thanks for this honour, Lord Brougham said he was
conscious "that it was not owing to any personal merits that he had
received this mark of distinction at their hands. First of all he owed
it to the circumstance that he had the honour of serving a monarch who
lived in the hearts of his subjects. He had enjoyed the honour of
serving that prince for nearly four years, and during that time he had
experienced from his Majesty only one series of gracious condescension,
confidence, and favour. To find that he lived in the hearts of his loyal
subjects in the ancient and important capital of the Highlands, as it
had afforded him (Lord Brougham) only pure and unmixed satisfaction,
would, he was confident, be so received by his Majesty, when he (Lord
Brougham) told him, _as he would by that night's post_ (cheers), of the
gratifying circumstances."[120] So far, however, from being gratified,
the bluff sailor king was tremendously annoyed. These fulsome
adulations, and the ridiculous manner in which his eccentric and
embarrassing Chancellor tortured any personal attention to himself
(Brougham) into a personal compliment to his royal master, thoroughly
disgusted him. For some weeks previously _The Times_ had attacked the
eccentric Chancellor with a constancy and vigour of satire quite
unexampled; the tide of ridicule was swelled by contributions from the
London and provincial press; Brougham made some foolish speeches at
Aberdeen and Dundee, which excited the laughter of his enemies and the
alarm of his friends. "Those who are charitably disposed," remarks the
unfriendly Greville, "express their humane conviction that he is mad,
and it probably is not very remote from the truth."

Intellectually strong as he was, a Chancellor so eccentric as this was
an _incubus_ to be got rid of at the first convenient opportunity. In
May, 1834, Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Earl of Ripon, and the
Duke of Richmond, seceded from the ministry; but the Whig party, in
spite of these resignations and the subsequent one of Lord Grey in July,
continued in office under Lord Althorp till the following November, when
the latter being called (by the death of his father) to the Upper House
as Earl Spencer, the king seized the opp