Margaret Thatcher were officially denied by William Heseltine, the Private Secretary to the Sovereign. Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up." Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Walters. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits on
Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Lord Chancellor (as seen in several of the portraits depicted below). In recent times, it has only regularly been worn at Coronations, but some chancellors (at least until the 1990s) have also worn it when attending the Trial of the Pyx as Master of the Mint. According to George Osborne, the robe (dating from Gladstone's time in office, and worn by the likes of Lloyd George and Churchill) 'went missing' during Gordon Brown's time as chancellor. Although the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland had been united by the Acts of Union 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. III