rds which, as there is reason to believe,
were invented for him and never spoken.[86] Beckford's friends believed
that he had got the better of the king, and Chatham in a grandiose
letter to him declared that "the spirit of old England spoke that
never-to-be-forgotten day". Nevertheless, Beckford's conduct was highly
indecorous. The sovereign never performs a public act on his own
responsibility, and accordingly all addresses on public affairs which
are to be answered in person are sent beforehand to the proper officer
that the king may receive the advice of his ministers as to his reply.
Beckford tried to entrap the king into entering into a personal
altercation and replying without consultation with his constitutional
advisers. George, who in public never fell short of his kingly part,
defeated his purpose by silence and afterwards ordered that his
unexpected speech was not to be looked upon as precedent.

He prorogued parliament a few days before this incident. For some months
his mind had been tried severely. His power, which he loved so well and
conscientiously believed himself bound to maintain, was at stake in the
political conflict. His letters to North prove how eagerly and anxiously
he watched the progress of that conflict in which he was really, though
not ostensibly, engaged in person. If Chatham and the city had succeeded
in forcing him to dissolve parliament on the ground that its authority
was vitiated by the nomination of Luttrell as a member for Middlesex, he
would have suffered a defeat which even his dogged perseverance would
have failed to retrieve. Rather than that, "I will," he said to Conway,
"have recourse to this," and he laid his hand on his sword. The
opposition had a good cause, but, as we have seen, they played their
part badly. Among the reasons of their failure a conspicuous place must
be assigned to the displeasure excited by the attacks made on the king
by the more violent section, the vile letter of Junius, the rudeness of
the city, and the like. The constant references which were made to some
secret influence, presumably that of his mother or Bute, which was
supposed to guide him were as foolish as they were rude, for George's
policy was his own. His anxieties and troubles were almost more than he
could bear. "At the [royal] gardening (_sic_) party" on June 2 he burst
into tears and talked somewhat strangely; he had, it was believed, "for
some time been much agitated and lived (as usual