Bolingbroke, therefore, was ever working against Walpole and the Court Party (by whom he was intensely hated), and there can be little doubt that he was responsible for the state of affairs between the Prince of Wales and his father and mother which existed at this time, and by so fanning their smouldering distrust and jealousy that it burst into the subsequent flame, which became a visible scandal to the whole country.
The Prince, however, had many other friends among the Opposition beside Bolingbroke and Doddington; his artistic temperament was gratified with the society of the witty Chesterfield (who had recently celebrated his marriage with Schulemburg’s daughter, the Countess of Walsingham, by taking another mistress), Pulteney and the eloquent Wyndham.
It cannot, however, be said that the Prince chose his companions for their virtues; it was rather for the absence of them; but possibly his young mind received as much harm from the crafty and unscrupulous Doddington as all the others put together, who, after all, were, most of them, mere posers in their vices; but Doddington appears to have been a kind of fat Mephistopheles, always pouring into the Prince’s ear advice which on the surface had the appearance of being ingenuous and good, but had ever for its aim the aggrandisement of the giver.
Such is the opinion of Doddington’s character written by one of his connections who published his celebrated diary some years after his death.
George Bubb Doddington was the nephew of a great landowner—one of the wealthiest in England—whose sister had been picked up by an Irish apothecary of the name of Bubb, who practised some say at Carlisle, others at Weymouth, possibly at both places at different times. He appears to have been excluded from the family circle of the Doddington’s, but upon his death his widow seems to have been forgiven and her son George adopted by her rich brother, who eventually bequeathed to him the whole of his vast estates.
The young George Bubb added by royal licence to his own simple and somewhat common designation his uncle’s name and arms, and apparently from that time forth had but one object in life, viz., to obtain a peerage.
He had commenced his career by entering Parliament for one of the two boroughs which he owned, and attaching himself to Walpole. Being, however, refused a peerage by that leader, he forsook him and deserted to the Opposition.
In due course, on the arrival of the Prince in England, and the manner of his reception by the King driving him to seek friends among his father’s opponents, Doddington was very pleased to bend the knee to him, and offer him not only his political support, which was considerable, but later his purse also. This lending of money to the Prince was the origin of the well-known unscrupulous remark, whether truthfully related or otherwise, which has been recorded against Frederick, and if made at all was probably a bit of boastfulness over wine cups to his boon companions, and it must not be forgotten that gentlemen were not at all above boasting in those days: “This is a strange country this England,” the Prince is said to have remarked, “I am told Doddington is reckoned a clever man, yet I got £5,000 out of him this morning, and he has no chance of ever seeing it again.” Another account, however, states that the Prince won it of him at play. Doddington, however, got the full value of the money he lent the Prince of Wales in the social distinction which the position of intimate adviser of the Heir-apparent conferred upon him.
Horace Walpole states that he even allowed himself to be wrapped in a blanket and rolled downstairs for the Prince’s amusement, when that young man was apparently indulging in a drunken frolic with his intimates. But even in his blanket bumping down the stairs it is very probable that he had in his mind’s eye that peerage which he no doubt considered certain when the Prince came to the throne. But much water rolled under London Bridge before George Bubb Doddington’s head was compassed by the golden circlet of a peer, and then only for a little time.