Walpole arrived at Richmond Lodge about three o’clock, and requested to be shown at once into the royal presence. The Duchess of Dorset, who was in waiting, said it was impossible, as the Prince had undressed and gone to bed after dinner according to his custom, and the Princess was resting also, and no one dared disturb them. But Walpole explained that his business brooked of no delay, and the duchess went to wake them. The King (as he must now be called), very irate at being disturbed, came into the ante-chamber in haste with his breeches in his hand—he was one of those princes who are fated to appear ridiculous even at the greatest moments of their lives. Walpole fell on one knee, kissed the hand holding the breeches, and told his Majesty that his royal sire was dead, and he was King of England. “Dat is von big lie,” shouted King George the Second, as he had shouted at the Duke of Roxburgh on a memorable occasion some time before. But Walpole, unlike the duke, showed no resentment at being given the lie, and for all answer produced Townshend’s despatch, which gave particulars of the late King’s death. George snatched the letter from him and eagerly conned it; but his face did not relax as he read, nor did his manner unbend towards the Prime Minister. Walpole uttered some words of formal condolence, but they were ungraciously ignored. After an awkward pause, he asked the King his pleasure with regard to the Accession Council, the Proclamation, and other matters necessary to be done at once, naturally expecting that he should be commanded to attend to them. “Go to Chiswick, and take your directions from Sir Spencer Compton,” said the King curtly, and turned his back as an intimation that the interview was at an end. George the Second then went to tell the great news to his Queen, and the crestfallen Minister withdrew, to go, as ordered, to Compton.
Walpole’s reflections on his ride to Chiswick must have been bitter indeed. Well might he exclaim, as his fallen rival, Bolingbroke, had done under a similar reverse: “What a world is this and how does Fortune banter us!” For years he had been Prime Minister with almost absolute power, enjoying to the full the confidence of his Sovereign. Suddenly he was stripped of every shred of authority, and dismissed (for the King’s bidding him go to Compton was tantamount to a dismissal) without the slightest consideration, like a dishonest servant. Walpole knew that George the Second owed him a grudge for not having kept his promises at the reconciliation, and disliked him, as he disliked all who enjoyed the late King’s favour. But the Prime Minister hoped that time and Caroline’s influence would put things right. He did not know that Pulteney had repeated certain remarks he had incautiously made soon after the reconciliation, when Pulteney asked him what terms he had got for the Prince of Wales. Walpole answered with a sneer: “Why, he is to go to court again, and he will have his drums and guards, and such fine things”. “But,” said Pulteney, “is the Prince to be left Regent as he was when the King first left England?” Walpole replied, “Certainly not, he does not deserve it, we have done more than enough for him; and if it were to be done again, we would not do so much”.[1] George the Second’s little mind resented slights of this kind more than greater wrongs, and he now took his revenge.
Sir Spencer Compton, to whom the disconcerted Minister sadly made his way, had been Speaker of the House of Commons, Treasurer of the Prince of Wales’s Household, and Paymaster of the Army. Compton was much more of a courtier than a politician. He was a man of the mediocre order of ability that often makes a good and safe official; he knew all about forms, procedure, and precedents, but he was not a leader of men, and he was quite unprepared for, and quite unequal to, the great position now thrust upon him. Walpole, who knew the man with whom he had to deal, felt towards Compton no personal resentment. He acquainted him briefly with George the First’s death, gave him the new King’s commands, and added on his own behalf: “Everything is in your hands; I neither could shake your power if I would, nor would if I could. My time has been, yours is beginning; but as we all must depend in some degree upon our successors, and as it is always prudent for these successors, by way of example, to have some regard for their predecessors, that the measure they mete out may be measured to them again—for this reason I put myself under your protection, and for this reason I expect you will give it. I desire no share of power or business, one of your white sticks,[2] or any employment of that sort, is all I ask, as a mark from the Crown that I am not abandoned to the enmity of those whose envy is the only source of their hate.”[3]
Though Compton was astonished at the news, he did not conceal his delight at the unexpected honour that had fallen upon him. Walpole’s speech flattered his vanity, and perhaps also touched his heart; he grandiloquently promised him his protection, and, thinking he had nothing to fear from the fallen statesman, took him into his confidence and consulted him as to how he should proceed. The two Ministers then drove together to Devonshire House to see the Duke of Devonshire, President of the Council, and arrange for an immediate meeting of the Privy Council. At forms Compton was an adept, but when it came to the speech that had to be put into the King’s mouth he was nonplussed. He took Walpole aside, and asked him, as he had composed all the speeches of the late King, to compose this one also. Walpole pretended to demur, but as Compton persisted, he consented and withdrew to a private room in Devonshire House to draft the speech, while Compton set off to do homage to the King and Queen. Walpole must have chuckled over his task, for if the precedent-loving Compton had only consulted the back folios of the Gazette he would have found plenty of models for the King’s speech; but he was so fussed with forms and ceremonies, and so elated with the sense of his new importance, that he was incapable of thinking coherently.
The King and Queen had driven up from Richmond in the afternoon, and were now arrived at Leicester House. The great news had spread abroad, and all London was flocking to Leicester Fields. When Compton arrived there, the square was so thronged with people who had assembled to cheer their Majesties that the coaches and chairs of the mighty, who were hurrying to pay their court, could scarce make way through the crowd. Inside Leicester House the walls were already hung with purple and black, and the Queen appeared in “black bombazine”; but these were the only signs of mourning, all else wore an aspect of rejoicing and congratulation. The new King and Queen held a court, the rooms were thronged with the great nobility and high officials, and persons of divers parties and creeds struggled up and down the stairs, all anxious to kiss their Majesties’ hands, and to profess their loyalty and devotion. The Queen, who had a keen sense of irony, must have smiled to herself when she contrasted the crowded rooms before her with the thinly attended receptions which Leicester House (except on great occasions such as birthdays) had witnessed during the past few years.
This was the proudest hour of Caroline’s life. She had reached the summit of her ambition, she had become Queen. But the mere show of sovereignty did not content her, she was determined to be the power behind the throne greater than the throne. It was not enough for her that she had become Queen through her husband, she was determined to rule through him also. Did this inscrutable woman, we wonder, in this her hour of glory, recall the parallel Leibniz had drawn long before, when the prospects of the House of Hanover were darkest, between her and England’s greatest Queen, Elizabeth? May-be, for, like Elizabeth, Caroline determined to have her Cecil. She knew there was but one man in England capable of maintaining the Hanoverian dynasty upon the throne in peace, and that one was Walpole. She had been dismayed when the King told her that he had sent for Compton, for she knew Compton’s weakness. But, like a wise woman she did not attempt to thwart her husband in the first heat of his resentment against his father’s favourite minister, who had been, willingly or unwillingly, the late King’s mouthpiece for many slights to him, and perhaps, too, she thought it would be good for Walpole to be taught a lesson. She bided her time.
Compton at once had audience of the King. When he came out from the royal closet he walked across the courtyard to his coach between lines of bowing and fawning courtiers, all anxious to bask in the rays of the rising sun. They knew full well what this audience portended. Compton, greatly flattered by this homage, drove back to Devonshire House, where he found that the man whom he had superseded had finished the King’s speech. Compton was graciously pleased to approve the draft; he took it and copied it in his own handwriting. He then again repaired to Leicester House to present it to the King. On this occasion he was accompanied by the Duke of Devonshire and other privy councillors, including Walpole, who were to be present at the Accession Council. George the Second liked the speech well enough, but found fault with one paragraph and desired that it should be altered. Compton wished it to stand, for he knew not how to change it, but the King was obdurate and very testy at being opposed. Compton was then so incredibly foolish, from the point of view of his own interest, as to ask Walpole to go to the King’s closet and see what he could do. Walpole went, nothing loath, and improved the occasion by declaring to the King his willingness to serve him either in or out of office. This was the Queen’s opportunity. According to some, it was she who suggested that Walpole should be sent for; she certainly suggested to the King that perhaps he had been a little hasty, and it would be bad for his affairs to employ a man like Compton, who had already shown himself inferior in ability to the Minister whom he was to succeed. But Caroline could do no more at this juncture than suggest, and leave the leaven to work in the King’s mind.
George the Second held his Accession Council that same night at Leicester House. He read his speech to his faithful councillors in which he lamented “the sudden and unexpected death of the King, my dearest father,” he spoke of his “love and affection” for England and declared his intention of preserving the laws and liberties of the kingdom, and upholding the constitution as it stood. If he felt any relenting towards Walpole it was not visible in his manner. Compton took the first place, and the man who had hitherto dominated the councils of the King, and was still nominally Prime Minister, was completely ignored by the new Sovereign. The office-seekers were not slow to follow the lead. For the next few days Leicester House was crowded every day, but whenever Walpole appeared the courtiers shrank away from him as though he had the plague. Walpole himself, though he knew the utter weakness of Compton, had no hope of being continued in office, and hourly expected to receive the King’s command to give up the seals. “I shall certainly go out,” he said to his friend Sir William Yonge, after the Council, “but let me advise you not to go into violent opposition, as we must soon come in again.” Yonge quickly had experience of going out, for he was dismissed the next day, the King had always hated him and called him “stinking Yonge”; Lord Malpas, Walpole’s son-in-law, was dismissed also. But the public announcement of the Prime Minister’s dismissal tarried unaccountably—unaccountably that is to those who were not behind the scenes.
The Queen’s influence was now beginning to tell. At first she persuaded the King to delay, for she knew that if he delayed he would reflect, and if he reflected he would change his mind. She reminded him of the trouble a change of Ministers would involve before he was comfortably seated on the throne, and she knew the King hated trouble. The King objected to Walpole’s notorious greed for gold, but the Queen met this by saying that, with so many opportunities of amassing wealth, he must by this time have become so rich that he would want no more, and this, in a lesser degree, applied to his colleagues. “The old leeches,” she cynically added, “will not be so hungry as the new ones, and will know their business much better.” The critical situation of foreign affairs was another of the arguments used by the Queen in favour of Walpole, for no one had the same grasp of the tangled skeins of foreign policy as he. The European courts, which did not understand the working of the English Constitution, might become alarmed at a sudden change of Ministry and imagine that it foretold a change in England’s foreign policy, thus creating a general distrust, which would be dangerous to the reigning dynasty, more especially as there was always the fear of secret negotiations going on between James and the Roman Catholic courts of Europe. This was particularly true of France, with whom it was of the utmost importance to maintain good relations at the present juncture. Whilst Caroline was thus arguing, as luck would have it, Horace Walpole, the Prime Minister’s brother, who was ambassador to France, arrived in England with a letter which his diplomacy had obtained from Cardinal de Fleury, pledging his master to maintain the treaties France had entered into with the late King, and to show goodwill towards George and ill-will to James. All these considerations told. But the most cogent argument which the Queen urged, and the one which had undoubtedly the most weight with the King, was the settlement of the Civil List. The new Civil List, Caroline reminded the King, was pressing, but a change of Ministers was not. There was nobody so able as Walpole to secure for them a handsome increase of the Civil List, for, as the old King said, he “could turn stones into gold”. Why then let private resentment lead to personal inconvenience?
Nothing was done during the King’s stay at Leicester House, and in the eyes of the world Compton was still first in the King’s favour. At the end of the week the Court moved to Kensington, and by that time the Queen had worked so well that the King sent for Walpole, and asked him about the Civil List. The new monarch mentioned a sum so large that Walpole was staggered, accustomed though he was to Hanoverian rapacity; but he showed nothing of his feeling in his face, and promised to do his utmost to serve his Majesty. He then had an audience of the Queen, who confided to him that Compton’s estimate had by no means satisfied the King’s demands, and he had proposed that she should have only a poor £60,000 a year. Walpole at once grasped the situation. He declared that he would obtain a jointure for her Majesty of £100,000 a year, which was £40,000 more than Compton had proposed, and he would force Parliament to meet the King’s wishes. It was said that Walpole bought his influence with the Queen for this extra £40,000 a year, but that was not wholly true. Quite apart from money, Caroline had wit enough to see that the interests of the House of Hanover could best be served by Walpole, and of all English statesmen he was the one who could most be trusted to frustrate the Jacobites—for the rival claims of the Stuarts were an ever present danger to the Hanoverian family until 1745. She was, of course, not averse to receiving something in return for her support, and Walpole, it must be admitted, paid, or rather made the nation pay, for it handsomely. In addition to the Queen’s £100,000 a year, Somerset House and Richmond Lodge were made over to her. Her income was double what any queen-consort had enjoyed before, and more than any has been granted since.