Sir Robert Walpole was sojourning at Chelsea, and thinking of nothing less than of the demise of a king, when news was brought him, by a messenger from Lord Townshend, at three o’clock in the afternoon of the 14th of June 1727, that his late most sacred Majesty was then lying dead in the Westphalian palace of his serene highness the Bishop of Osnaburgh. Sir Robert immediately hurried to Richmond, in order to be the first to do homage to the new sovereigns, George and Caroline. George accepted the homage with much complacency, and on being asked by Sir Robert as to the person whom the King would select to draw up the usual address to the privy council, George II. mentioned the speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Spencer Compton. This was a civil way of telling Sir Robert that his services as prime-minister were no longer required. He was not pleased at being supplanted, but neither was he wrathfully little-minded against his successor--a successor so incompetent for his task that he was obliged to have recourse to Sir Robert to assist him in drawing up the address above alluded to. Sir Robert rendered the assistance with much heartiness, but was not the less determined, if possible, to retain his office, in spite of the personal dislike of the King, and of that of the Queen, whom he had offended, when she was Princess of Wales, by speaking of her as ‘that fat beast, the prince’s wife.’ Sir Robert could easily make poor Sir Spencer communicative with regard to his future intentions. The latter was a stiff, gossiping, soft-hearted creature, and might very well have taken for his motto the words of Parmeno in the play of Terence:--‘Plenus rimarum sum.’ He intimated that on first meeting parliament he should propose an allowance of 60,000_l._ per annum to be made to the Queen. ‘I will make it 40,000_l._ more,’ said Sir Robert, subsequently, through a second party, to Queen Caroline, ‘if my office of minister be secured to me.’ Caroline was delighted at the idea, intimated that Sir Robert might be sure ‘the fat beast’ had friendly feelings towards him, and then hastening to the King, over whose weaker intellect her more masculine mind held rule, explained to her royal husband that as Compton considered Walpole the fittest man to be--what he had so long been with efficiency--prime-minister, it would be a foolish act to nominate Compton himself to the office. The King acquiesced, Sir Spencer was made president of the council, and Sir Robert not only persuaded parliament, without difficulty, to settle one hundred thousand a year on the Queen, but he also persuaded the august trustees of the people’s money to add the entire revenue of the civil list, about one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year, to the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, which had been settled as proper revenue for a king. Sir Robert had thus the wit to bribe King and Queen, out of the funds of the people, and we cannot be surprised that their Majesties