Others stayed from love of power or for what they could get.

In that golden age of patronage it was possible for a man to hold a plurality of offices which would bring to himself many thousands of pounds a year, and also to secure the reversion of offices and pensions to his children.

Horace Walpole spent a long life in luxurious ease because of offices with high pay and few duties secured in the distant days of his father's political power.

Contracts to supply the army and the navy went to friends of the government, sometimes with disastrous results, since the contractor often knew nothing of the business he undertook.

When, in 1777, the Admiralty boasted that thirty-five ships of war were ready to put to sea it was found that there were in fact only six.