The Duchess of Kendal gained an able ally in Bolingbroke, who had now returned again to England, and through the influence of the duchess had gained the restoration of his title and estates, though not his seat in the House of Lords. “Here I am then,” he wrote to Swift, “two-thirds restored, my person safe, and my estate, with all the other property I have acquired or may acquire, secured to me; but the attainder is kept carefully and prudently in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again into the House of Lords, and his bad leaven should sour that sweet untainted mass.” Bolingbroke now entered into an alliance with the opposition in the House of Commons, and intrigued with the Duchess of Kendal to oust Walpole from the King’s favour. Had they been given time, they might have succeeded. The Duchess of Kendal presented to the King a memorial, drawn up by Bolingbroke, on the state of political affairs, and she persuaded him to grant the fallen statesman a private audience. Walpole declared years later that the King showed him the memorial, and it was at his suggestion that George the First consented to receive Bolingbroke. During the whole time Bolingbroke was closeted with the King, Walpole stated that he was waiting in the ante-chamber, and when the audience was over, he asked the King what Bolingbroke had said. The King replied indifferently: “Bagatelles, bagatelles”. But the fact that the King, who had dismissed Bolingbroke from office, and refused to receive him in 1714, when he first came to England, (though that was before his attainder), now consented to give him a special audience looked ominous for his great rival. Bolingbroke boasted that the King was favourably inclined to him, and only deferred making him Prime Minister until his return from Hanover, where he was soon setting out. But he could have had no grounds for the latter statement, though what he and the Duchess of Kendal might have achieved in time it is impossible to say.