Though the Opposition was weak in numbers, and suffered from a lack of cohesion in its different groups, it was strong in the quality of its individual members. Pulteney headed the opposition to Walpole in the House of Commons, more especially that part of it which included the malcontent Whigs and the more moderate Tories who supported the Hanoverian succession. It was Bolingbroke who built up this party, and he invented for it the name of “Patriots”. Carteret, and later Chesterfield, were among its leading lights, but Pulteney was the chief. This remarkable man was in the prime of life, and endowed with natural and acquired advantages. He was of good birth, and the owner of great wealth; he had a handsome person, a dignified manner and a cultured mind. His wit and scholarship almost rivalled Bolingbroke’s, and as an orator he had few equals, and no superior, in his generation. Pulteney’s abilities as a statesman were of the highest order; he had been a colleague of Walpole in earlier days, and stood by him in many a hard fought fight. He had therefore the strongest claims for place. But Walpole, jealous of Pulteney’s powers, passed him over for Cabinet office and offered him a minor post in the Government, and a peerage. The latter was refused, the former accepted for a time, but Pulteney soon resigned and went into active opposition. He joined forces with Bolingbroke, and the first fruit of their union was the _Craftsman_, a journal which fiercely attacked Walpole and his policy, the second was the formation of the Patriots’ party. Bolingbroke, though still excluded from the House of Lords, was able through the medium of the _Craftsman_ to address himself to the wider constituency of the nation. His articles against his lifelong enemy were masterpieces of damaging criticism and polished invective. Besides Bolingbroke, the ablest political writers of the day contributed to the _Craftsman_. The most remarkable feature of the Opposition was the fact that it included men who, though differing widely among themselves, were united in common hatred of Walpole. There became practically only two parties in the State, those who were for Walpole and those who were against him; and the differences between malcontent Whig and Tory, Jacobite and Hanoverian, sank into comparative insignificance. Thus Pulteney and Carteret were staunch Hanoverians and Whigs, Barnard was a Hanoverian Tory, Wyndham a Tory with Jacobite leanings, and Shippen a Jacobite out and out; Bolingbroke stood among these parties, partaking a little of them all, and concentrating into himself the essence of their hatred of Walpole.