The Honourable William Townshend, son of the celebrated politician, Viscount Townshend, and Groom of the Bedchamber, and Privy Purse to the Prince of Wales, very nearly lost his appointment and that of A.D.C. to the King through his temerity in voting against the measure. The Townshend family seem always to have been sympathisers with the Prince, and to have been his good friends, and this association led to incidents which will be dealt with later. Another of the Prince’s followers at this time, and one who was given much credit for the failure of the Excise Act, was the celebrated Bubb Doddington, a man of great wealth and a very large landowner, but the real credit for this rebuff to the King and Walpole must be given to the brilliant genius of Bolingbroke, which worked behind the Leaders of the Opposition and moved them like so many chess-men on a board. Bolingbroke’s hatred of Walpole was of that intense nature, that it is related by the latter’s brother Horace that upon Bolingbroke’s return to England after his exile an attempt was made to reconcile the two enemies, and Bolingbroke so far mastered his pride as to accept an invitation to dine with Sir Robert at Chelsea, but it is further stated by the same authority that Bolingbroke rose from the table at the first course and left the room; his detestation of the great Minister could no longer be repressed. 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.