Though the resignation of Godolphin had been accepted in October, no new commission of Treasury was issued till after the prorogation.  Who should be First Commissioner was a question long and fiercely disputed.  For Montague’s faults had made him many enemies, and his merits many more, Dull formalists sneered at him as a wit and poet, who, no doubt, showed quick parts in debate, but who had already been raised far higher than his services merited or than his brain would bear.  It would be absurd to place such a young coxcomb, merely because he could talk fluently and cleverly, in an office on which the wellbeing of the kingdom depended.  Surely Sir Stephen Fox was, of all the Lords of the Treasury, the fittest to be at the head of the Board.  He was an elderly man, grave, experienced, exact, laborious; and he had never made a verse in his life.  The King hesitated during a considerable time between the two candidates; but time was all in Montague’s favour; for, from the first to the last day of the session, his fame was constantly rising.  The voice of the House of Commons and of the City loudly designated him as preeminently qualified to be the chief minister of finance.  At length Sir Stephen Fox withdrew from the competition, though not with a very good grace.  He wished it to be notified in the London Gazette that the place of First Lord had been offered to him, and declined by him.  Such a notification would have been an affront to Montague; and Montague, flushed with prosperity and glory, was not in a mood to put up with affronts.  The dispute was compromised.  Montague became First Lord of the Treasury; and the vacant seat at the Board was filled by Sir Thomas Littleton, one of the ablest and most consistent Whigs in the House of Commons.  But, from tenderness to Fox, these promotions were not announced in the Gazette.794

Dorset resigned the office of Chamberlain, but not in ill humour, and retired loaded with marks of royal favour.  He was succeeded by Sunderland, who was also appointed one of the Lords Justices, not without much murmuring from various quarters.795 To the Tories Sunderland was an object of unmixed detestation.  Some of the Whig leaders had been unable to resist his insinuating address; and others were grateful for the services which he had lately rendered to the party.  But the leaders could not restrain their followers.  Plain men, who were zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, who were beyond the range of Sunderland’s irresistible fascination, and who knew that he had sate in the High Commission, concurred in the Declaration of Indulgence, borne witness against the Seven Bishops, and received the host from a Popish priest, could not, without indignation and shame, see him standing, with the staff in his hand, close to the throne.  Still more monstrous was it that such a man should be entrusted with the administration of the government during the absence of the Sovereign.  William did not understand these