to move the Loyal Address; later in the year he made and saw carried a motion for the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, at a time when the government were pledged to seek the consent of the King before doing so: some suspected he did so at the behest of the government. Appointed a Lord of the Treasury in 1827, he was promoted to Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in February 1828 at the request of William Huskisson, having first to overcome the opposition of his father. When Huskisson resigned in May 1828, Egerton's father insisted upon Egerton's resignation; on Egerton's subsequent account because he thought the Wellington cabinet had lost its more enlightened elements and would now take a hard line against Catholic Relief. Egerton, however, was convinced that Wellington intended some measure of relief and soon rejoined the government; in June 1828 he was made a Privy Councillor and appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, a post he held until July 1830, when he became Secretary at War for a short time during the last Tory ministry. Daniel O'Connell, when alleging duplicity by the subsequent Whig administration, said "I never knew a gentleman more incapable of violating his promise than Lord Francis Leveson Gower" Sutherland was a pocket county of his family and when in 1831 his father supported parliamentary reform but Francis did not, his father presented the seat to a supporter of reform: in 1833 his father was made Duke of Sutherland. The Bridgewater trust His father, however, died within the year, and the estates he had inherited from Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater passed to Francis, who then took, by Royal Licence, the surname of Egerton. The Bridgewater estates were held under trust and gave an annual income reported to be £90,000, but the trust was drawn up to exclude Egerton from its day-to-day management. The principal assets were the Bridgewater Canal, and the collieries at Worsley, which also served as the headquarters of the canal. Worsley In a letter of 1837, Egerton spoke of the various undertakings at Worsley giving him influence over the immediate destinies of between three and four thousand people. The coal mines at Worsley were said in 1837 to employ 1700 people. It was reported in 1842 that there had been 101 persons killed and injured in them in the previous three years One