thing of a few. Her toilet was a strange medley: prayers, and sometimes a sermon, were read; tattle and gossip succeeded; metaphysics found a place; the head-dress was not forgotten; divines stood grouped with courtiers, and philosophers with ladies! On the table, perhaps, lay heaped together, the newest ode by Stephen Duck upon her beauty, her last letter from Leibnitz upon Free Will, and the most high-wrought panegyric of Dr. Clarke, on her "inimitable sweetness of temper," "impartial love of "truth,” and “ very particular and uncommon degree of "knowledge, even on matters of the most abstract specu"lation."* Her great delight was to make theologians dispute in her presence, and argue controverted points, on which it has been said, perhaps untruly, that her own faith was wavering. But no doubt can exist as to her discerning and most praiseworthy patronage of worth and learning in the Church; the most able and pious men were every where sought out and preferred, and the Episcopal Bench was graced by such men as Hare, Sherlock, and Butler. Even to her enemies she could show favour, if they could show merit; through her intercession were Carte the historian and Lord Lansdowne the poet recalled from exile, and the former enabled to show his gratitude by renewing his intrigues for the Pretender.

In fact, so great was the influence of Queen Caroline over her husband, that neither in the Church nor in the State were any appointments made without her having at least some share in them, and during ten years she may be said to have governed England. But she was one of those "who, if she rules him, never shows she rules." Her power was felt, not displayed. She had the art of instilling ideas into the King's mind, which after a time

*See his Dedication to his own and Leibnitz's Letters, pp. iii.— xiii. ed. 1717.

+ Butler, author of the celebrated "Analogy," was then living obscurely in the country as rector of Stanhope. The Queen thought that he was dead, and asked the question of Archbishop Blackburne, "No, Madam," said His Grace, "but he is buried!" The Queen took the hint, and put down Butler in her list for a vacant Bishoprick, which he obtained after her death. See the Life of Secker, and Coxe's Walpole, pp. 551. and 554.

he found there, and believed to be his own. It was her plan always to affect to retire when the Minister came to the King, declaring that she did not understand business, and only remaining as it seemed to obey His Majesty's commands. By her management he never became jealous, nor she boastful, of authority. Nay, so ready was she to consult and comply with all his inclinations, that she lived on a friendly footing with his mistress, one of her bed-chamber women. This was Henrietta, daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, and married to Mr. Howard, who afterwards succeeded to the Earldom of Suffolk. The Queen used to call her in banter her sister Howard, and was pleased to employ her at her toilet, or in menial offices about her person.* Lady Suffolk was placid, good-natured, and kind-hearted, but very deaf, and not remarkable for wit. Though the King passed half his time in her company, her influence was quite subordinate to that of the Queen; she could obtain from George but little attention and less pay, and at length, weary of a post so unprofitable as that of a favourite without favour, she left him, and withdrew from Court in 1734. †

It seemed, however, so difficult to believe that the wife should be always preferred to the mistress, that Lady Suffolk received a large share of homage and solicitation. All the wits in opposition courted her friendship, and celebrated her perfections. Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, the eloquent Bolingbroke, and the chivalrous Peterborough, formed a galaxy of genius around her, and she shines in history with a lustre not her own. Even the moody Swift declares, "I know no person of your sex for whom "I have so great an esteem," and even her deafness

*Memoirs of Horace Walpole, vol. i. p. 513.

Horace Walpole, and after him Archdeacon Coxe, state that Gay, Swift, and Chesterfield all fell into disgrace at Court by supposing Lady Suffolk's influence to be greater than the Queen's, and leaning only on the former. But the falsehood of these stories and surmises is well shown by the editor of the Suffolk Letters. (See especially his note, vol. ii. p. 84.) All the stories of Horace Walpole are to be received with great caution; but his Reminiscences, above all, written in his dotage, teem with the grossest inaccuracies and most incredible assertions.

To Lady Suffolk, November 21. 1730,

becomes modesty and merit in the graceful lines of Pope.*

The despatch from Lord Townshend, announcing the King's death, reached London on the 14th of June. Walpole immediately hastened to the palace of Richmond, where he was told that the Prince, according to his usual custom, had retired to bed for an afternoon slumber. His Highness (so we may call him for the last time) being awakened, at Walpole's desire, started up and made his appearance half-dressed. Walpole knelt down and kissed his hand; but the King was at first incredulous, nor convinced of the truth, until Townshend's letter was produced. The Minister then inquired whom His Majesty would be pleased to appoint to draw up the necessary declaration to the Privy Council, fully hoping that the choice would fall himself. 66 "answered the King, Compton,' shortly, and Walpole withdrew in the deepest disappointment.†

upon

Sir Spencer Compton, the second surviving son of the Earl of Northampton, was chosen Speaker in 1715, and a Knight of the Bath, on the revival of that Order. He and Lord Scarborough had been the chief favourites of the King as Prince of Wales. He was respectable in his private, regular in his public, character. In the Speaker's chair, where form rather than substance is required, he had fulfilled his duty well, but the seals of office were too heavy for his hands. So little acquainted was he with real business, that when Walpole conveyed to him the King's commands, he avowed his ignorance, and begged Walpole to draw up the Declaration for him. Sir Robert willingly complied, and the Declaration which he wrote was carried by Compton to the King.

Seeing the weakness of his rival, Walpole, with his usual sagacity, said to his friend Sir William Yonge,

* After a long panegyric, he concludes : —

"Has she no faults then, Envy says, Sir?

66

Yes, she has one, I must aver,

"When all the world conspires to praise her,

"The woman's deaf, and will not hear!"

These lines have also been ascribed to Lord Peterborough.

† Minutes of Conversation with Mr. Scrope, Coxe's Walpole, vol. ii. p. 519.

"I shall certainly go out, but let me advise you not to go "into violent opposition, as we must soon come in again." It was not easy (such was the jealousy between them) for any Minister of George the First to stand well with the Prince of Wales. Pulteney, moreover, had taken care to repeat, or perhaps to exaggerate, some disrespectful expressions which Walpole had used in 1720.* Yet Sir Robert, on returning to office, had not neglected to found his future, as far as he could venture without hazarding his present favour. He had obtained from the King the Garter for Lord Scarborough, and had often gratified with places other personal adherents of the Prince.† Above all, Walpole had now Queen Caroline on his side. He had gained her regard by his attentions, her esteem by his abilities; she perceived that no one could surpass him in financial skill, and that the late King was scarcely mistaken, when he said to her one day in chapel, that Walpole could change stones into gold! At this crisis also, he fixed and secured her favour, by a well-timed offer to obtain from Parliament a jointure for Her Majesty of 100,000l. a year, while Compton only ventured to propose 60,000l. What better proof could be required that Walpole was fittest for Prime Minister?

Under these circumstances, the triumph of Compton endured but a few days. Caroline, without openly opposing the King's resolution, represented to him the rashness and danger of dismissing a prosperous and wellestablished government; she made him acquainted with the incapacity of Compton, in applying for assistance to the very Minister whom he displaced; and she added, that Walpole had agreed to carry through the House of

According to Pulteney, this conversation passed on the reconciliation in the Royal Family in 1720. Pulteney asked Walpole what terms he had made for the Prince. "To which you answered, with "a sneer,Why he is to go to Court again, and he will have his drums "and his guards and such fine things." But, said Pulteney, Is the Prince to be left Regent again as he had been when the King left England? "Your answer was this: he does not deserve it. We "have done too much for him, and if it was to be done again, we "would not do so much!" See Pulteney's" Answer to an Infamous "Libel."

† Count de Broglie to the King of France, July 24. 1724. Minutes of Conversation with Mr. Scrope.

Commons an increase of 130,000l. to the Civil List. Such arguments had their due weight with George, while Horace Walpole arriving from Paris, artfully magnified to him the difficulties of foreign negotiations in new hands. Compton himself was now beginning to see the shoals and rocks before him. He could scarcely hope to contend at once with the Tories and with Walpole and his friends, in opposition; and to join the Tories at that juncture seemed a hazardous experiment. Thus his own sense of danger combining with the rising doubts of the King, he was induced to relinquish his commission, and the King to re-appoint the old Ministers. No change took place in the Cabinet, except that Lord Berkeley, who had been leagued with Carteret and Roxburgh, was replaced at the Admiralty by Lord Torrington, a more devoted friend of Walpole. As for Compton, he was gratified with the title of Wilmington and the Presidency of the Council; and it might be said of him, as afterwards of Pulteney, that he shrunk at once into insignificance and an Earldom.

The Opposition, who had expected any thing rather than the re-appointment of Walpole, were stunned with the blow, and unfitted for resistance in Parliament. When Walpole proposed that the entire revenue of the Civil List, producing, as he said, 93,000l., but in fact about 130,000l. beyond the sum of 700,000l. granted to George the First, should be settled on His Majesty, no voice but Shippen's was raised against it; and to the proposal of 100,000l. for Her Majesty's jointure, there was no dissent at all. This unanimous Parliament was soon prorogued, and then, as the law requires, dissolved.

The Jacobites had always hoped that the death of George the First would be the signal of confusion, and the dawning of triumph to themselves. They were confounded at finding, on the contrary, a new spirit of loyalty displayed, a new expectation of prosperity excited, not only in the Parliament, but amongst the people. The letter of the Earl of Strafford to James at that crisis is now before me. He observes, that "the alteration

*

"here was so sudden and surprising, that no man knew

* Dated June 21. 1727. See Appendix.