, one of
which supported the King and the King's advisers, while the other found
its centre in the house of the Heir to the Throne. We shall see this
condition of things re-appearing in all the subsequent reigns of the
Georges. The ministry and their friends {257} were detested and
denounced by those who surrounded the Prince of Wales; the adherents of
the Prince of Wales were virtually proscribed by the King. Then, as at
a later date in the history of the Georges, those who favored and were
favored by the Prince were looking out with anxious hope for the King's
death. When "the old King is dead as nail in door," then indeed each
leading supporter of the new king believed he could say with Falstaff,
"The laws of England are at my commandment; happy are they which have
been my friends." Pulteney and his supporters were among the friends
and favorites of the Prince of Wales; they constituted the Prince's
party. The Prince's party was composed mainly of the men who were
Tories but were not Jacobites, and of the Whigs who disliked Walpole or
had been overlooked or offended by him, or who in sober honesty were
opposed to his policy. In all these, and in a daily growing number of
the people out-of-doors, Pulteney had his friends and Walpole his
enemies.

But a more formidable rival than even Pulteney was now again to the
front and active in hostility to Walpole. This was the man whom the
official records of the time described as "the late Viscount
Bolingbroke." The late Viscount Bolingbroke, it need hardly be said,
means that Henry St. John whose title of viscount had been forfeited
when he fled to France and joined the Pretender. Bolingbroke had
lately received the pardon of King George. He had secured the pardon
chiefly by means of an influence then familiar and recognized in
politics--that of one of the King's mistresses. Bolingbroke had got
money with his second wife, and through her he conveyed to the Duchess
of Kendal a large sum--about ten thousand pounds--with the intimation
that more would be forthcoming from the same place, if necessary, to
obtain his object. The Duchess of Kendal was easily prevailed upon,
under these circumstances, to recognize the justice of Bolingbroke's
claim and the sincerity of his repentance. Moreover, there was about
the same time that {258} political intrigue, or rather rivalry of
intrigues, going on between Walpole and Carteret, between England and
France, in which it was t