Through the anticipated natural death of the Queen, the opposition hoped to effect the political death of Walpole. ‘In case the Queen dies,’ writes Chesterfield, ‘I think Walpole should be looked upon as gone too, whether he be really so or no, which will be the most likely way to weaken him; for if he be supposed to inherit the Queen’s power over the King it will in some degree give it him; and if the opposition are wise, instead of treating with him, they should attack him most vigorously and personally, as a person who has lost his chief support. Which is indeed true; for though he may have more power with the King than any other body, yet he will never have that kind of power which he had by her means; and he will not even dare to mention many things to the King which he could without difficulty have brought about by her means. Pray present my most humble duty to his royal highness,’ concludes the writer, ‘and tell him that upon principles of personal duty and respect to the King and Queen (if alive), he cannot go too far; as, on the other hand, with relation to the ministers, after what has passed he cannot carry his dignity too high.’ The same strain is continued in a second letter, wherein it is stated with respect to the anticipated death of the Queen: ‘It is most certain that Sir Robert must be in the utmost distress, and can never hope to govern the King as the Queen governed him;’ and he adds, in a postscript: ‘We have a prospect of the Claude Lorraine kind before us, while Sir Robert’s has all the horrors of Salvator Rosa. If the prince would play the rising sun, he would gild it finely; if not, he will be under a cloud, which he will never be able hereafter to shine through.’ Finally, exclaims the eager writer: ‘Instil this into the _Woman_’--meaning by the latter the Prince of Wales’s ‘favourite,’ Lady Archibald Hamilton, who ‘had filled,’ says Lord Mahon, ‘the whole of his little court with her kindred.’ According to Horace Walpole, ‘whenever Sir William Stanhope met anybody at Carlton House whom he did not know, he always said, “your humble servant, Mr. or Mrs. Hamilton.”’ A fortnight after Chesterfield contemptuously calls Lady Archibald ‘the _Woman_,’ he begins to see the possibility of her rising to the possession of political influence, and he says to Mr. Lyttelton: ‘Pray, when you see Lady Archibald, assure her of my respects, and tell her that I would trouble her with a letter myself, to have acknowledged her goodness to me, if I could have expressed those acknowledgments to my own satisfaction; but not being able to do that, I only desire she would be persuaded that my sentiments with regard to her are what they ought to be.’[43] In such wise did great men counsel and intrigue for the sake of a little pre-eminence, which never yet purchased or brought with it the boon of happiness. CHAPTER IX. CAROLINE, HER TIMES AND CONTEMPORARIES.