Beneath is a coat of arms, a favourite figure with the satirists, as if designed for the sign of a tavern; the bearings are, 1. A fox running away with a goose. 2. “Checquy,” _i.e._, as in the sign of the Chequers; the words, “Time-servers Intire;” behind appear a bottle and two glasses, tobacco-pipes, and bribes. “£100, £50, £40, £2,”--to suit all appetites; on a riband above the shield is the legend:--“Votes are sold for Wine and Gold.” The crest of the card would be a suitable escutcheon for Hogarth’s comprehensive election satires which appeared in the contest of 1754. Another coat of arms, also aimed at the credit of the prime minister, was reissued as appropriate to this season:--“To the glory of the Rt. Honble. Sir Robert Walpole,” “A great Britt.,” alluding to the motto of “S(ir) R(obert) W(alpole)’s Arms,” supplies an ironical and explanatory text:-- “There is another Device at the Base, the _Arch_, in the shape of a _Coat of Arms_, which is bound round with a _Garter_, and hath these words inscribed upon it:--_Honi soit qui Mal y pense_; ‘Evil be to him, that evil thinks.’ What is most remarkable in this _Coat_ is, that it bears _three axes_ on one side, and that the crest is a _Man’s Head_, with a strange sort of _Cap_, which hath a Ducal Coronet at the bottom by way of Border;” --thus suggesting that Walpole deserved decapitation, while the ballads of the day were all for finding a gibbet for “false Bob.” As to the print itself, it is said:-- “I am glad to hear that it hath already met with the approbation and encouragement of a _very great Family_; and I hope shortly to see it displayed in the richest colours upon Fans, and wrought into _Screens_ and _Hangings_ for the use and ornament of the Palace of Norfolk;” --referring to Houghton Hall, the seat of Sir Robert Walpole, a residence well known to fame. The popular interest excited by the Westminster contest generally seemed to make that election the most prominent in every appeal to the country. On the dissolution of parliament, April 28, 1741, when the fate of Walpole’s Administration was known to depend upon the aggregate return of his nominees, the ministers expected to bring in their friends who had previously sat for Westminster; the first great opposition to the Government had its rise there, where the Court was supposed to possess an unbounded influence. In the “Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole” the circumstances of the contest are thus summarized:--