Unfortunately, Walpole was much given to wine and women, despite his beautiful wife; in fact, she was not far behind him on her part in receiving the attentions of the opposite sex. She is said to have had liaisons with Lord Hervey, and also with the little Prince of Wales, adding one more to his long list of “_foiblesses_.” It is almost incredible to believe, as it has been stated, that Robert Walpole lent himself to this intrigue of his wife’s to curry favour with the Prince. Be this as it may, it stood him in poor stead on the death of George the First, for when he presented himself to the new King, who was at the time at the Palace of Richmond, and having broken the news of the old King’s death and kissed hands, asked who should draw up the declaration to the Privy Council, he was abruptly told by the new monarch to go to Sir Spencer Compton, who was his treasurer as Prince of Wales. It was not until after some days of very painful suspense that Walpole, through the good offices of the new Queen, Caroline, who had a great belief in his talents as a financier, was sent for and reappointed First Lord Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a matter of fact of course they could not do without him. But in all the years that passed from the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714 to the death of George the First, in 1727, it is almost incredible to believe that Caroline could have forgotten her first-born son in Hanover, whom at this time she had not seen for thirteen years. Whatever the origin of the dislike--nay hatred--was which unnaturally grew up between this son and his parents, it must have begun at an early period. Its nature will now be never known in all probability, but it must have been a most extraordinary revulsion of feeling which caused such a woman as Caroline, kind-hearted, intellectual, in every other respect a perfect mother, to turn against the first child she had held to her bosom. Some say that Caroline’s affection had been absorbed by her younger son William, Duke of Cumberland, who was born in England, and who extraordinarily resembled her, and this theory takes colour when considering the fact that the Prince and Princess up to the time of his birth had continually urged George the First to allow Prince Frederick to come to England, but after the arrival of the new Prince no further requests were made in this direction, but all their hopes and ambitions for the future seemed centred in Prince William, for whom it is said they would gladly have secured the throne of England if they had been able, leaving the Electorate of Hanover for Frederick.