The king paid another visit to Hanover in May 1719. On this occasion "the Prince and Princess of Wales," says Tindal, "not being appointed regents, retired into the country, and appeared uo more till the king's departure, a few days after which they came to St. James's to see the young princesses, who kept a levee twice a week ; and to them it was that the lords-justices and a numerous appear ance of foreign ministers, nobility, and gentry, made their compli ments on the king's birthday." It is believed that the famous Peerage Bill of this year (GEonoE I.] was brought forward chiefly in conse quence of the quarrel between the king and his son, and with the view of limiting the powers of the latter when he should come to the throne. In the final discussion which it underwent in the House of Commons in November, Sir John Packington observed that some persons had through indiscretion occasioned an unhappy difference in the royal family, and he was apprehensive if that bill, so prejudicial to the rights of the next heir, should pass into a law, it might render that difference irreconcilable. The allusiou here was understood to be to the Earl of Sunderland, thee first lord of the treasury and prime minister, the mover and most zealous promoter of the hill.
The reconciliation of the king and the prince was at last effected in April 1720, chiefly by the endeavours of the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Walpole, who had for some time past attached themselves to the court of his royal highness. On the 23rd of that mouth an interview took place between the father and son; and the termination of their difference was immediately announced to the public by the prince, on his return to Leicester-House, being-attended by a party of the yeomen of the guard and of the horse-guards, and by the foot guards beginning to mount guard at his house. Tho reconciliation however was probably never very cordiaL It may be observed that when the king immediately after this set out to pay another visit to his continental dominions, he left the government in the hands of the lords-justices, as on the last occasion. A story is told by Horace Walpole which appears to show that the king's animosity lasted to the end of his life. After having destroyed two wills which he had made in favour of his son, he had intrusted a third, supposed to have been of an opposite character, to the keeping of Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, who on the accession of George II. presented it to the new king. To the surprise of every one present, his majesty, putting it into his pocket, stalked out of the room, and the will was never heard of more. Lord John Russell, in relating this story (' Memoirs of Affairs of Europe,' it. 396), observes that " by the law of Englaud the will would not have been valid ; all property, real as well as personal, of the king, descends with the crown." It does not appear to be now understood that this is law. Walpole states that another copy of the will, which is believed to have bequeathed large legacies to the Duchose of Kendal and her niece Lady Walsingham ipeoeoe I.], had been deposited with the Duke of Brunswick, hut that the silence of the duke was secured by a subsidy, and that the acquiescence of Lord Chesterfield (the husband of Lady Walsingharn, who threatened a suit in chancery), was obtained by a payment of 20,000/. (Wal pole's 'Memoirs,' ii., 459, and see Mahon'e 'England,' close of chap. xiv.) George II. succeeded his father, June 10, 1727. It was at first his intention to place at the head of the government Sir Spencer Comp ton (afterwards Earl of Wilmington), who was then the speaker of the House of Commons; but when that persou received the royal com mands to draw up the declaration to the privy-council, he was obliged to call in Walpole to assist him. Queen Caroline, whose influence
with her husband was very great, now interposed ; and the result was that Walpole was continued in office. The war with Spain was finally terminated by the treaty of Seville, concluded 9th of November 1720; and for ten years from this time Walpole contrived to preserve peace. New causes however of dissatisfaction with Spain arose, principally out of alleged interferences of that power with the free dom of English commerce • and the minister at last found it impos sible to resist the cry of the country for a new war. Hostilities were commenced in the close of 1739; and the reduction of Portobello, on the isthmus of Darien, by Admiral Vernon, in the beginning of the following year, still further sharpened the eagerness with which the popular feeling had rushed into the contest. The operations that were subsequently attempted however were not equally successful; repeated attacks upon Carthagcna, iu particular, all signally failed. The death of the emperor Charles VI. in October 1740, speedily pro duced a general European war ; Great Britain supporting the settle ment called the Pragmatic Sanction, by which the succession to the Austrian dominions devolved upon the late emperor's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, queen of liungary; France and Spain uniting to maintain the claims of Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria (elected emperor in 1742 under the title of Charles VII.) Meanwhile various cause. had been co-operating to shake Walpole's power. The mere length of his tenure of office had tired the country and created impatience for a change. The pacific, policy in which be bad so obstinately persevered had disgusted the general eagerness for a war excited by a feeling that the national interest and honour alike demanded recourse to arms, and the course he had taken in this respect bad impaired his reputation as much as his popularity. His scheme for the extension of the excise, introduced in 1733, had, although abandoned, produced au unfavourable impression that sunk deep into the popular mind, and an outcry him that never subsided. The loss of his steady and influential protectress, Queen Caroline, who died 20th of November 1732, deprived him of one of his strongest supports in the favour of the king. Just before that event also • violent quarrel had broken out between the king and the Prince of Wales, who now headed the opposition, and collected around him at Leiceeter-House a court and party, one of the chief of whose avowed objects was the removal of the premier. In these circum stances a new parliament met 4th of December 1741, in which Walpole soon found himself eo placed as to make it necessary to retire. He resigned all his places in the end of January 1742, and was imme diately created Earl of Orford. So long as be lived however, which was not more than three years, Walpole continued really the king's chief adviser. The ministry that immediately succeeded was nominally appointed by his great rival Pulteney, but it was in reality the result of a compromise, and Pulteney himself was by Walpole'e contrivance annihilated in the very moment of his apparent triumph, by being compelled to leave the House of Commons and to take a peerage : as Earl of Bath he became at once nobody. A reconciliation at the same time took place between the king and the prince ; but neither this nor any of the other arrangements lasted long. In a few months the prince was again in opposition, and the new ministry wee assailed by an adverse force, composed in part of their ancient allies, as formidable as that which had driven Walpole from power.