The King’s revenue, as settled upon him by the Whig parliament, was larger than any of our Kings had before enjoyed. Caroline’s jointure, 100,000_l._ a year, with Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, was double that which had been granted previously to any Queen. This success had been so notoriously the result of Walpole’s exertions, that the husband of Caroline, who dealt in very strong terms, began to look complacently on the ‘rogue and rascal,’ thought his brother Horace bearable, in spite of his being, as George used to call him, ‘scoundrel,’ ‘fool,’ and ‘dirty buffoon,’ and he even felt less averse than usual to the two secretaries of state of Walpole’s administration, the Duke of Newcastle, the ‘impertinent fool,’ whom he had threatened at the christening of William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Townshend, whom he was wont to designate as a ‘choleric blockhead.’ The issue of the affair was, that of Walpole’s cabinet no one went out but the minister’s son-in-law, Lord Malpas, roughly ejected from the Mastership of the Robes, and ‘Stinking Yonge,’ as the King used elegantly to designate Sir William, who was turned out of the Commission of Treasury, and whose sole little failings were, that he was ‘pitiful, corrupt, contemptible, and a great liar,’ though, as Lord Hervey says, ‘rather a mean than a vicious one,’ which does not seem to mend the matter, and which is a distinction without a difference. After all, Sir William only dived to come up fresh again. And Lord Malpas performed the same feat. Henceforth, it was understood by every lady, says Lord Hervey, ‘that Sir Robert was the Queen’s minister; that whoever he favoured she distinguished, and whoever she distinguished the King employed.’ The Queen ruled, without seeming to rule. She was mistress by power of suggestion. A word from her in public, addressed to the King, generally earned for her a rebuke. Her consort so pertinaciously declared that he was independent, and that she never meddled with public business of any kind, that every one, even the early dupes of the assertion, ceased at last to put any faith in it. Caroline ‘not only meddled with business, but directed everything which came under that name, either at home or abroad.’ It is too much, perhaps, to say that her power was unrivalled and unbounded, but it was doubtless great, and purchased at great cost. That she could induce her husband to employ a man whom he had not yet learned to like was in itself no small proof of her power, considering the peculiarly obstinate disposition of the monarch.