it is enough to say that the old Duke of Newcastle
hurried to the new premier, and told him the appointment would never
do; that the new secretary was not only an Irish adventurer, which was
true, but that he was an Irish papist, which was not true; that he was
a Jesuit, that he was a spy from Saint Omer's, and that his real name
was O'Bourke. Lord Rockingham behaved like a man of sense and honour,
sent for Burke, and repeated to him what he had heard. Burke warmly
denounced the truthlessness of the Duke's tattle. He insisted that
the reports which his chief had heard would probably, even unknown to
himself, create in his mind such suspicions as would stand in the way
of a thorough confidence. No earthly consideration, he said, should
induce him to continue in relations with a man whose trust in him was
not entire; and he pressed his resignation. To this Lord Rockingham
would not consent, and from that time until his death, seventeen
years afterwards, the relations between them were those of loyal and
honourable service on the one hand, and generous and appreciative
friendship on the other. Six and twenty years afterwards (1791) Burke
remembered the month in which he had first become connected with a
man whose memory, he said, will ever be precious to Englishmen of
all parties, as long as the ideas of honour and virtue, public and
private, are understood and cherished in this nation.

The Rockingham ministry remained in office for a year and twenty days
(1765-66). About the middle of this term (December 26, 1765) Burke was
returned to Parliament for the borough of Wendover, by the influence
of Lord Verney, who owned it, and who also returned William Burke for
another borough. Lord Verney was an Irish peer, with large property in
Buckinghamshire; he now represented that county in Parliament. It
was William Burke's influence with Lord Verney that procured for his
namesake the seat at Wendover. Burke made his first speech in the
House of Commons a few days after the opening of the session of 1766
(January 27), and was honoured by a compliment from Pitt, still the
Great Commoner. A week later he spoke again on the same momentous
theme, the complaints of the American colonists, and his success was
so marked that good judges predicted, in the stiff phraseology of the
time, that he would soon add the palm of the orator to the laurel of
the writer and the philosopher. The friendly Dr. Johnson wrote to
Langton that Burke had ga