Boughton Rouse (as he then was) knew by March 1789 that he could not expect to be returned again for Evesham and informed Pitt of it. He did not contest the general election of 1790 and in May 1791 was dismissed ‘with a consolatory baronetcy’ from his post as chief secretary to the Board of Control, where he had put forward his own views to the annoyance of Henry Dundas.
In the first session of the new Parliament, apart from being chairman of the Malmesbury election committee, he spoke several times on Indian affairs. On 14 Oct. 1796 he moved for information on East India Company finances and on 20 Dec. approved the status quo, hoping that India would be a perpetual source of profit to England. On 22 Dec. he spoke against attempting to form a code of criminal law for India. His chief interest in a parliamentary seat was probably as a means of obtaining a place under government, especially as his elder brother had in 1794 left all the family estates, to the value of £50,000, to his daughters by a maidservant. He was a defaulter on 3 Apr. 1797, but voted for Pitt’s triple assessment, 4 Jan. 1798, and was a government teller on 22 June 1798 and 12 Oct. 1799. Writing to Pitt from his sickbed on 14 Feb. 1799, ‘on the strength of the assurance you kindly gave me in 1791 of your disposition to consider my claim to some compensation for loss of office’, he referred to his 15 years of steady attachment to him and support of his government, and added, ‘Should your favourable regard place me in any office compatible with a seat in Parliament, my re-election would be sure at a certain expense’.