Hervey had a nimble and superficial pen, and sometimes employed himself in writing anonymous pamphlets in defence of the Government and Court against members of the Opposition. A great many of these anonymous pamphlets were showered upon the town at this time, and Pulteney chancing to come across one of them, entitled _Sedition and Defamation Displayed_, which attacked him and Bolingbroke in no measured terms, thought it was from Lord Hervey’s pen (it afterwards turned out to be not so), and wrote a violent answer, also anonymous, called _A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel_. This pamphlet abused Walpole, and by implication the Court, and applied several opprobrious epithets to Hervey, speaking of him by his nickname “Lord Fanny,” describing him as “half-man and half-woman,” and dwelling malignantly on his peculiar infirmities. The pamphlet was warmly resented at court. Like many who set no bounds to their own malice, Hervey was extremely sensitive to attack, and wishing to curry favour with the King and Queen he wrote to Pulteney to know if he were the author of the pamphlet. Pulteney answered that he would inform him on that point if Hervey would tell him first whether he was the writer of _Sedition and Defamation Displayed_. Hervey sent back word to say that he had not written the pamphlet, and again demanded an answer to his question. Pulteney returned a defiant message saying that “whether or no he was the author of the _Reply_ he was ready to justify and stand by the truth of every word of it, at what time and wherever Lord Hervey pleased”. This was tantamount to a challenge, and Hervey, though not given to duelling, could not in honour ignore it. A duel was arranged. “Accordingly,” writes an eye-witness,[21] “on Monday last, between three and four in the afternoon, they met in Upper St. James’s Park, behind Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J. Rushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr. Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey that he would have infallibly run my lord through the body if his foot had not slipped, and then the seconds took the occasion to part them. Upon which Mr. Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of concern at the accident of their quarrel, promising at the same time that he would never personally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey made him a bow without giving him any sort of answer, and, to use a common expression, thus they parted.” Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote some lines on this duel, in which, addressing Pulteney, he says:-- Lord Fanny once did play the dunce, And challenged you to fight; And he so stood to lose his blood, But had a dreadful fright.