Against this mass of disorder the only orderly force that could be opposed was the Army. It will presently be seen that the Army had grave enough faults of its own, but the outcry against it was levelled not at its faults but at its power as a disciplined body to execute the law. So far, therefore, the unpopularity of the Army was fairly universal. But its most formidable opponents were bred by faction, the Jacobites who wished to re-establish the Stuarts naturally objecting to so dangerous an obstacle to their designs. The howl against the Army was raised in the House of Commons as early as in 1714, and in 1717 a Jacobite member who, being more conspicuous for honesty than for wisdom, was known as "Downright Shippen," opened a series of annual motions for the reduction of the forces. This self-imposed duty, as he once boasted to the House, he fulfilled on twenty-one successive occasions, though on thirteen of them he had found no seconder to support him.[17] If this had been all, no great harm could have resulted; but the watchword of a baffled opposition, artfully stolen from old times of discontent, was too useful not to be generally employed, and "No Standing Army" became the parrot's cry of every political adventurer, every discontented spirit, every puny aspirant to importance. Walpole himself did not disdain to avail himself of it during the four years which he spent out of office between 1717 and 1721, and the stock arguments of the malcontents were never urged more ably nor more mischievously than by Marlborough's Secretary-at-War.[18] The Lords again were little behind the Commons, and Jacobite peers who had commanded noble regiments in action were not ashamed to drag the name of their profession through the dirt. [Sidenote: 1714-1739.]