means gained her cordial support, which he steadily enjoyed to the day of her death, when his positive influence on the King died also.[1] Lord Melcombe's unsteadiness of temper made him the first to quit his friend, Sir Robert Walpole, and so little did he know of what was going forward that the day before Sir Robert Walpole was declared Minister, he asked somebody whether Walpole was staying to be kicked out. The same thing nearly happened to him at the end of his life. It may be seen by his diary that he was among the last to discover Lord Bute's influence, notwithstanding his access to Leicester House and that he appears to have had nothing else to think about except the politicks of that House.
"Mr. Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, was the House of Commons rival of Sir Robert Walpole. He was by all accounts the greatest House of Commons orator that had ever appeared. He had a sharp cutting wit, both in and out of the House, was an elegant scholar, avaricious in the most supreme degree, as was his father before him (his wife the same), vindictive, torn with little passions, unequal and uneven, sometimes in very high and sometimes in very low spirits, and full of little enmities. Examine his long opposition, and it will be seen he never did any good nor attempted any. His great occupation was to raise the mob in order to turn out Sir Robert Walpole. He not only did no good, but he did a great deal of mischief by dint of clamour and abuse. Never was faction carried such lengths.
"Sir Robert Walpole led a very unhappy life some years before his resignation, as appears by several Diaries which will be published sooner or later. I have heard Alderman Beckford say that he was a young man, and a very active instrument in and out of doors. Among other things he was concerned in bringing the famous Jenkins to the bar of the House of Commons in 1738, to prove the cruelty of the Spaniards on the coast of America. This man pretended to have had his ears cut off by the Spaniards. Alderman Beckford has frequently
- ↑ In 1737.
