Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/463

Rh should receive £250 per annum, a house to live in, and a certainty for life in case of the decease of Shelburne, or of their separation during his life. On May 16th, 1772, he preached his farewell sermon at Mill Hill Chapel, and in June was established at Calne. "In this situation," he writes in his Memoirs, "I continued seven years, spending the summer with my family at Calne, and a great part of the winter in his Lordship's house in London. My office was nominally that of librarian, but I had little employment as such besides arranging his books, taking a catalogue of them, and of his manuscripts, which were numerous, and making an index to his collection of private papers. In fact I was with him as a friend."

The condition of the Opposition remained unchanged when Shelburne returned from France. "It gives me great concern," he wrote in reply to Chatham, "to find the general account confirmed by your Lordship. It does no honour to the principal persons concerned, whose views may be supposed to have contributed to the present reduced state of things, and must exclude all hope for the public. I feel it the more, because I had hoped that from the success already experienced by the efforts of opposition when joined to those of the public, great and substantial improvements might still be obtained from year to year to the constitution, the field being large; but a secret influence appears to have crept into Opposition, too much resembling in its motives and its means that so much complained of at St. James'; for nature in these days seems to delight in creating everything double."

The "King's Friends," on the contrary, continued to grow in strength and prestige under the leadership of Jenkinson. They soon had an opportunity of showing their strength on the congenial field of ecclesiastical politics.