The prince protested immediately; he wrote from Plombières, where he had gone to take the waters, proclaiming his rights to the crown of England, as well as his grief at the death of the queen, his sister: "whose good intentions we could not doubt," added he. "And we have therefore remained inactive, awaiting the happy issue which has been, unfortunately, prevented by her death." Exiled princes, banished by revolutions, are sometimes ignorant even of the language of the people they hope to govern: in the face of popular indignation, the friends of the Pretender, and those of the last ministry of Queen Anne, were compelled to affirm that the proclamation of Plombières was an odious fabrication. [Image] George I. {137} The king finally arrived, landing at Greenwich, on the 18th of September, 1714, accompanied by his son the Prince of Wales. A ministry was formed immediately, conferring all power upon the Whig party; Lord Nottingham alone belonged, in principle, to the Tories, but parliamentary intrigues had for some time past reconciled him to the triumphant party. William III. had endeavored to unite, in the same government, the chiefs of the two great political factions; but however powerful might be his intelligence and personal action, he was not calculated for internal struggles and jealousies. George I. delivered himself without reserve into the hands of the party that he believed the most faithful to his cause. Even before his arrival in England he ordered the dismissal of Bolingbroke. The seals were immediately taken from him. "I have been neither surprised nor grieved at my fall," wrote he to Atterbury. "The mode that they have used shocked me only for a moment. I am not in any way alarmed by the malice or the power of the Whigs, but that which distresses me is this: I see clearly that the Tory party is destroyed." The new Parliament was more intensely Whig than the Commons of 1713. Lord Townshend, at the head of the cabinet, was honest and sincere, but as rude in his temper as in his actions. General Stanhope, second Secretary of State, shared his sentiments; both had received from their adversaries an example of violence. Walpole, although holding no prominent official position, but having more influence than any other member of the house, had answered for the Commons, provided the Whigs were allowed full liberty of action. {138}