He was the intimate or the patron of men who now stand out as among the first lights of that time--of Morellet, of Priestley, of Bentham.

Yet a few months of power seem to have disclosed faults of character, which left him without a single political friend, and blighted him with irreparable discredit.
Fox, who was now the head of the Rockingham section of the Whigs, had, before the death of the late premier, been on the point of refusing to serve any longer with Lord Shelburne, and he now very promptly refused to serve under him.

When Parliament met after Rockingham's death, gossips noticed that Fox and Burke continued, long after the Speaker had taken the chair, to walk backwards and forwards in the Court of Bequests, engaged in earnest conversation.

According to one story, Burke was very reluctant to abandon an office whose emoluments were as convenient to him as to his spendthrift colleague.

According to another and more probable legend, it was Burke who hurried the rupture, and stimulated Fox's jealousy of Shelburne.