The Queen’s influence was now beginning to tell. At first she persuaded the King to delay, for she knew that if he delayed he would reflect, and if he reflected he would change his mind. She reminded him of the trouble a change of Ministers would involve before he was comfortably seated on the throne, and she knew the King hated trouble. The King objected to Walpole’s notorious greed for gold, but the Queen met this by saying that, with so many opportunities of amassing wealth, he must by this time have become so rich that he would want no more, and this, in a lesser degree, applied to his colleagues. “The old leeches,” she cynically added, “will not be so hungry as the new ones, and will know their business much better.” The critical situation of foreign affairs was another of the arguments used by the Queen in favour of Walpole, for no one had the same grasp of the tangled skeins of foreign policy as he. The European courts, which did not understand the working of the English Constitution, might become alarmed at a sudden change of Ministry and imagine that it foretold a change in England’s foreign policy, thus creating a general distrust, which would be dangerous to the reigning dynasty, more especially as there was always the fear of secret negotiations going on between James and the Roman Catholic courts of Europe. This was particularly true of France, with whom it was of the utmost importance to maintain good relations at the present juncture. Whilst Caroline was thus arguing, as luck would have it, Horace Walpole, the Prime Minister’s brother, who was ambassador to France, arrived in England with a letter which his diplomacy had obtained from Cardinal de Fleury, pledging his master to maintain the treaties France had entered into with the late King, and to show goodwill towards George and ill-will to James. All these considerations told. But the most cogent argument which the Queen urged, and the one which had undoubtedly the most weight with the King, was the settlement of the Civil List. The new Civil List, Caroline reminded the King, was pressing, but a change of Ministers was not. There was nobody so able as Walpole to secure for them a handsome increase of the Civil List, for, as the old King said, he “could turn stones into gold”. Why then let private resentment lead to personal inconvenience?