25 Aug. 1725 the duke was dismissed. Walpole made his trusted friend the Earl of Islay then Privy Seal for Scotland, the ministerial manager for that country [see Campbell, Archibald, third Duke of Argyll]. In obedience to Walpole's instructions and as Walpole's representative in Scotland, the earl levied the tax and put down the brewers' combination. The session in parliament of 1725 was made memorable by the impeachment for corruption of the Earl of Macclesfield [see Parker, Thomas], lord chancellor. It is said that Walpole was jealous of the chancellor's personal influence with the king and the German ministers. He himself took the decisive measure of appointing a committee of the privy council to investigate the rumours against Macclesfield (Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, iv. 518), and his friend Sir George Oxenden moved the impeachment in the commons. On the other hand, William Pulteney, now in open opposition, and Sir William Wyndham [q. v.], the leader of the tories, were the chancellor's defenders. After George I's death Walpole refused to make Macclesfield any further payments from the treasury in discharge of the fine of 30,000l. which the king had promised to defray (ib. p. 539).
On 20 April 1725 Walpole seconded a motion made by Lord Finch in the House of Commons for removing so much of Bolingbroke's attainder as to enable him to succeed upon his father's death to the family estates. Walpole, who knew his restless temper, had always opposed his return, and in 1733 spoke of his yielding to it as ‘a much repented fault’ (Hervey, Memoirs, i. 224). He was induced to support this motion only by the peremptory insistence of the king, prompted by the Duchess of Kendal, who pocketed a bribe of 11,000l. His reluctance, and still more his insertion of a clause in the act restoring Bolingbroke's estates, which prevented Bolingbroke from exercising a free disposition over them, excited keen resentment (Onslow MSS. p. 515). Bolingbroke at once set to work to unite the scattered factions which had hitherto offered but a desultory and feeble opposition to Walpole's administration.
In 1725 Walpole persuaded the king to revive the order of the Bath, ‘an artful bank of thirty-six ribands to supply a fund of favours’ (Horace Walpole, Reminiscences, p. cxiv). He was himself on 27 May invested with the order, which he quitted on 26 June 1726 for the Garter. This promotion of a commoner, for the first time since 1660, caused much jealousy among the nobility, and suggested the nickname ‘Sir Bluestring’ by which he was commonly assailed in the pasquinades of the time.
Foreign affairs now first began to press upon Walpole's attention. The treaty of Vienna, signed on 30 April 1725, had effected a coalition between Philip V of Spain and the emperor Charles VI of Austria. It was suspected to include, and in fact did so, secret articles for the wresting of Gibraltar from the English, of Hanover from the king, for the restoration of the pretender, and for the suppression of protestantism. As a counter move to this, Townshend, then with the king, devised the treaty of Hanover. This established an alliance between England, France, and Prussia. In England an outcry at once arose that the country was to be sacrificed to the king's German dominions. Walpole, who had not been consulted, blamed Townshend as ‘too precipitate.’ He dreaded a war which, he wrote to Townshend on 13 Oct., was only to be justified by the imminence of an invasion. As evidences of a projected invasion multiplied (Walpole to Townshend, 21 Oct. 1725, Coxe, ii. 488), his dislike of the treaty abated, and on 19 Feb. 1726 he carried in the House of Commons an address expressing approval of it. Nevertheless, he still resented Townshend's conduct, and henceforth insisted upon being made acquainted with the progress of foreign affairs (Hervey, Memoirs, i. 23). It is not without significance that we find him on 19 June 1726 addressing a complimentary letter to Fleury. Townshend, on the other hand, resented this new departure. On 23 May 1726 Pozobueno wrote to Ripperda, ‘The misunderstanding between Townshend and Walpole daily increases’ (Coxe, ii. 501).
While this rift was widening in the ministry, Pulteney, as leader of the opposition, was adding to his following in the House of Commons. In a letter to the emperor on 17 Dec. 1726, Palm estimated his supporters as nearly a third of the house, and outside the house as consisting ‘in the richest and most considerable persons of this nation.’ His policy was an alliance with the emperor, Walpole's for the maintenance of friendship with France. Upon the assembling of parliament, on 17 Jan. 1727, Walpole dexterously turned the popular feeling against Pulteney's policy by the king's speech which revealed the terms of the treaty of Vienna. So intense was the public indignation that ministers carried the address by 251 to 81.
In December 1726 the opposition had started the ‘Craftsman,’ a paper chiefly inspired by Bolingbroke. It contained scurrilous invectives against the Walpoles and
