We are every day nearer confusion.  The King is in as bad humour as a monarch can be; he wants to go abroad, and is detained by the Mediterranean affair; the inquiry into which was moved by a Major Selwyn, a dirty pensioner, half-turned patriot, by the Court being overstocked with votes.(1024) This inquiry takes up the whole time of the House of Commons, but I don’t see what conclusion it can have.  My confinement has kept me from being there, except the first day; and all I know of what is yet come out is, as it was stated by a Scotch member the other day, “that there had been one (Matthews) with a bad head, another, (Lestock) with a worse heart, and four (the captains of the inactive ships) with no heart at all.”  Among the numerous visits of form that I have received, one was from my Lord Sandys:  as we two could only converse upon general topics, we fell upon this of the Mediterranean, and I made him allow, “that, to be sure, there is not so bad a court of justice in the world as the House of Commons; and how hard it is upon any man to have his cause tried there!”

Sir Everard Falkner(1025) is made secretary to the Duke, who is not yet gone:  I have got Mr. Conway to be one of his aide-de-camps.  Sir Everard has since been offered the joint-Postmastersh’ip, vacant by Sir John Iyles’S(1026) death; but he would not quit the Duke.  It was then proposed to the King to give it to the brother:  it happened to be a cloudy day, and he, only answered, ,I know who Sir Everard is, but I don’t know who Mr. Falkner is.”

The world expects some change when the Parliament rises.  My Lord Granville’s physicians have ordered him to go to the Spa, as, you know, they often send ladies to the Bath who are very ill of a want of diversion.  It will scarce be possible for the present ministry to endure this jaunt.  Then they are losing many of their new allies:  the new Duke of Beaufort,(1027) a most determined and unwavering Jacobite, has openly set himself at the head of that party, and forced them to vote against the Court, and to renounce my Lord Gower.  My wise cousin, Sir John Phillipps, has resigned his place; and it is believed that Sir John Cotton will soon resign but the Bedford, Pitt, Lyttelton, and that squadron, stick close to their places.  Pitt has lately resigned his bedchamber to the Prince, which, in friendship to Lyttelton, it was expected he would have done long ago.  They have chosen for this resignation a very apposite passage out of Cato: 

“He toss’d his arm aloft, and proudly told me He would not stay, and perish like Sempronius.”

This was Williams’s.

My Lord Coke’s match is broken off, upon some coquetry of the lady with Mr. Mackenzie,(1028) at the Ridotto.  My Lord Leicester says, there shall not be a third lady in Norfolk of the species of the two fortunes(1029) that matched at Rainham and Houghton.”  Pray, will the new Countess of Orford come to England?