entific tastes, and a good deal of superficial
knowledge. His abilities were small; he would, George's father used to
say, "make an excellent ambassador in any court where there was nothing
to do".[2] He lacked the steadfast self-reliance necessary to the part
which he undertook to play, and had none of the dogged resolution of his
royal pupil. His enemies freely accused him of falsehood; he was
certainly addicted to intrigue, but he was probably too proud a man to
utter direct lies. The friendship between him and the princess was close
and lasting. It was generally believed that he was her paramour, but for
this there is no real evidence. It would have been contrary to the
character of the princess, and the assertion seems to have been a
malicious scandal. George liked him, and when he was provided with a
household of his own in 1756, he persuaded the king to put the earl at
the head of it as his groom of the stole. Though utterly incompetent for
the task, Bute instructed the prince in the duties of kingship; he
encouraged him in the idea that a king should exercise a direct control
over public affairs, and is said to have borrowed for him a portion of
Blackstone's then unpublished _Commentaries on the Laws of England_ in
which the royal authority is magnified.

George's political system was, it is evident, largely based on
Bolingbroke's essay _On the Idea of a Patriot King_. In this essay
Bolingbroke lays down that a king who desires the welfare of his people
should "begin to govern as soon as he begins to reign," that he must
choose as his ministers men who "will serve on the same principles on
which he intends to govern," and that he must avoid governing by a
party. Such a king will unite his people, and put himself at their head,
"in order to govern, or more properly subdue, all parties". This
doctrine seemed specially appropriate to the state of affairs at
George's accession. During the last two reigns the power of the crown
had dwindled. Neither George I. nor George II. had cared for, or indeed
understood, domestic politics, and the government had fallen into the
hands of the whig party which became dominant at the Revolution. The
whigs posed as defenders of the Hanoverian house and of the principles
of 1688. Those principles limited the exercise of the prerogative, but
they did not involve depriving the crown of all participation in the
government. The whig party exaggerated them, and while the fortunes of
Hanov