Throughout his checkered career William Pitt, subsequently Earl of Chatham, cast himself in the role of patriot. He played the part with immense panache (one of the reasons why the theatrical metaphor is so appropriate) and exploited its political advantages to the full. Unfortunately, however, neither Pitt's political position nor his political intentions during the 1760s could be as readily accommodated to this patriot ideal as they had been earlier in his political career. After the accession of the new king, and as the configuration of politics changed, so the patriot stereotype became as much a liability as a political advantage. Pitt's problem was quite simply that certain of his actions, and here the obvious instances were his acceptance of a pension in 1761 and a peerage in 1766, could easily be construed or attacked as incompatible with the tenets of true patriotism. In these years Pitt was hoist with his own petard.