the Electoral prince; (84) and it is true, that the demand made by the Prince of his writ of summons to the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, which no wonder was so offensive to Queen Anne, was made in concert with his grandmother, without the privity of the Elector his father.  Were it certain, as was believed, that Bolingbroke and the Jacobites prevailed on the Queen 85) to consent to her brother coming secretly to England, and to seeing him in her closet; she might have been induced to that step, when provoked by an attempt to force a distant and foreign heir upon her while still alive.  The Queen and her heiress being dead, the new King and his son came over in apparent harmony; and on his Majesty’s first visit to his electoral dominions, the Prince of Wales was even left Regent; but never being trusted afterwards with that dignity on like occasions, it is probable that the son discovered too much fondness for acting the king, or that the father conceived a jealousy of his son having done so.  Sure it is, that on the King’s return great divisions arose in the court; and the Whigs were divided-some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown, and others to the expectant.  I shall not enter into the detail of those squabbles, of which I am but superficially informed.  The predominant ministers were the Earls of Sunderland and Stanhope.  The brothers-in-law, the Viscount Townshend and Mr. Robert Walpole, adhered to the Prince.  Lord Sunderland is said to have too much resembled as a politician the earl his father, who was so principal an actor in the reign of James II. and in bringing about the Revolution.  Between the earl in question and the Prince of Wales grew mortal antipathy; of which -,in anecdote told me by my father himself will leave no doubt.  When a reconciliation had been patched up between the two courts, and my father became first lord of the treasury a second time, Lord Sunderland in a t`ete-`a-t`ete with him said, “Well, Mr. Walpole, we have settled matters for the present; but we must think whom we shall have next” (meaning in case of the King’s demise).  Walpole said, “Your lordship may think as you please, but my part is taken;” meaning to support the established settlement.

Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent passions, and had dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel, looking on himself’ as totally unqualified for the post, and suspecting it for a plan of mocking him.  He died in one of those tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the explosion of the South Sea scheme.  That iniquitous affair, which Walpole had early exposed, and to remedy the mischiefs of which he alone was deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of affairs, and obliged Sunderland