Meanwhile, in Great Britain in 1781.....

     Reckoned by talent alone, Burke should have had a Cabinet position himself.  Yet he lost out.  He was a commoner, indeed and Irish novus homo, at a time when Cabinets were small and almost invariably drawn from the peerage; and there may have been some taint from the well-known financial speculations of Will Burke and Richard Burke.  But there wer perhaps two other important reasons in the background.  Burke's relationship with Rockingham had faded somewhat, and the long years of often futile opposition had taken a toll on his public character.  He was not merely passionate and outspoken but becoming tougher, somewhat embittered, and prone to rant.  Over time he would acquire the nickname of 'the Dinner Bell', able to clear the Commons benches when he rose to speak.  Colleagues who had admired him increasingly saw him as a bore . . . uncollegial . . . unsteady . . . too independent-minded . . . not someone to have round the Cabinet table.  It cannot have helped either side that he was so often right.

-Jesse Norman,  Edmund Burke: The First Conservative