Foreseeing the separation of the American colonies from the mother country if the arbi trary measures then adopted should be con tinued, he advocated a conciliatory policy, and in 1766 lent all the weight of his influence in securing the repeal of the Stamp Act. In the same year he was again called upon to form a ministry, in which he took the office of Lord Privy Seal, and was raised to the peerage as Earl of Chatham. His acceptance of this honor was very unpopular ; and in the Upper House he never became the dominating force he had been in the Commons. In the following year sup pressed gout disordered his whole. nervous sys tem and drove him into intense mental depres sion; his intellect became clouded; he went into retirement and was inaccessible even to his colleagues in the Cabinet ; and so continued until his resignation in 1768. In January 1770 he again denounced the coercive measures employed against the American colonies; from that time till 1774 he was again in retirement ; in that and the following year he again pleaded for conciliation, and in 1776 the colonies declared themselves independent. In May 1777 he un successfully moved an address to the Crown praying for a stoppage of hostilities, but he was not willing to recognize American independence. On 7 April 1778, though laboring under severe illness, he appeared at the House on crutches, with his legs swathed in flannel, and made his way to his place; and though plainly not him self, spoke movingly on his old theme, the rela tions with the American colonies. At the close of the Duke of Richmond's reply he stood up again, pressed his hand on his breast and fell i down in an apoplectic fit ; and was conveyed to his country seat at Hayes, Kent, where he died a month later. Parliament made provision for
his family, his debts were paid and he was honored with a public funeral and a magnificent monument in Westminster Abbey. Another was erected in 1782 at the Guildhall. His popularity in America was very great, and several local ities were named in his honor, as well as Pitts burgh, Pa., and Pittsfield, Mass.
Bibliography.— Many biographies of Chat ham have been written, but an intimate 'Life' it is impossible to write, as the materials do not exist. He had no intimates, and as Lord Rose bery says, off all vestiges of his real self as completely as a successful fugitive from Justice. We know what was around him, the scene on which he played, the other actors in the great drama, and we recognize him on the stage; but away from the footlights he re mains in darkness. Consult 'Lives' by Thack eray (2 vols., London 1827) ; von Ruvelle (Eng lish trans. by H. G. Chayter, 3 vols., New York 1907) ; Williams (2 vols., New York 1913) ; and Frederic Harrison (New York 1905) ; his 'Cor respondence,' edited by Taylor and Pringle (4 vols., London 1838-40) ; his 'Correspondence with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commanders in America,' edited by Kimball (2 vols., New York 1906) ; Winstanley's 'Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition' (Cambridge 1912) ; Lord Rosebery, 'Chatham: His Early Life and Connections' (New York 1910) ; and Macaulay's two essays, the most brilliant and the most satisfying brief account of his life and work that has ever been pub lished, and which is never likely to be super seded.