[112] William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, had been persuaded by Sir Robert Walpole to apply himself to politics, in which, soon making a figure, he was appointed Secretary at War, when the Whigs came into power in the late King’s reign; but towards the end of it he went into Opposition, at the head of which he continued till the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. That Minister persuaded the King, when he took leave of him, to comply with none of Mr. Pulteney’s demands, unless he would quit the House of Commons and accept a Peerage, which he imprudently promising to do, though not without great reluctance, before the patent was passed, and raising his creatures,--Sandys, Sir John Rushout, Gybbon, Harry Vane, and Harry Furnese,--who were men of the meanest capacities, to the chief places, in preference to all the rest of the Opposition who had acted with him, they refused to follow him in his politics, and persecuted him in Parliament, and with innumerable libels and satires. On the death of Lord Wilmington, he asked for the Treasury, to which Mr. Pelham was preferred, but to which he was named in the Ministry of three days. From that time he made no figure; he was immensely rich, from great parsimony and great successions, and had endeavoured to add another to them: the Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter to King James II., designing to take a journey to Rome, to promote some Jacobite measures, and apprehending the consequence, made over her estate to Lord Bath, by a deed which he afterwards sunk, and pretended to have lost. On this, the Duchess, after forcing a release from him, struck him out of her will as one of her Executors; and many years afterwards, on marrying her grandson to Lord Hervey’s daughter, she appointed Sir Robert Walpole one of her Executors. This happening soon after that Minister’s fall, he said to Lord Oxford in the House of Lords, “So, my Lord, I find I have got my Lord Bath’s place before he has got mine.” [113] After the revolution of three days, Lord Bath was going to print a Diary which he had kept, in order to show all the falsehoods, treacheries, and breaches of promise of the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pelham, he having minuted down their conversations with him on the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. [114] William, Lord Talbot, was eldest son of Charles Talbot, Lord Chancellor. [115] Sir Dudley Ryder. [116] He resigned the beneficial place of Treasurer of the Navy just after Sir Robert Walpole’s removal, because the Opposition said that his attachment to the Court arose from interest; yet that Minister always thought the Speaker not enough attached to him, and treated him very roughly, especially on his first visit after his disgrace. However, when the votes for the two last members of the secret committee were equal on the ballot for two of Sir Robert’s friends and two of his enemies, the Speaker decided in favour of the former.