That stubborn good sense of his on the occasion of the South Sea fever had established Robert Walpole's reputation as a safe minister, and the sober common sense of the nation was with him. He had shown himself an advocate for peace, and Bolingbroke, who in the days of Marlborough's triumphs in the Low Countries had cavilled at the continuance of the war, was now scornful of the Treasurer's pacific policy, and led the chorus of the disaffected to the tune of England's decay. Lavendale dined with Lord Bolingbroke more than once that autumn at his house in Pall Mall, the splendid mansion in Golden Square having passed into other hands during his lordship's exile. Lavendale was a Whig by birth and education, but his Whiggism was not strong enough to prevent his friendship with the most brilliant man of the age, or to exclude him from the most intellectual circle in England. He went down to Dawley, Bolingbroke's fancy farm near Uxbridge, where his lordship appeared to advantage in his favourite character of country squire, and where the ploughs and harrows painted in fresco on the walls of the hall indicated his bucolic bent. Here Lavendale made the acquaintance of the statesman's French wife, and here he met Pope and Swift, and Arouet de Voltaire, who had now established himself in the neighbourhood of London, a distinguished literary exile, and who was _l'ami de la maison_ at Dawley. In his wild youth, when good Queen Anne was sovereign of England, and the Mohawk Club in full swing, Lavendale had admired Henry St. John as the type and model of all that is finest in manhood. He had been then, in the insolence of power and floodtide of success, scheming for the restoration of the Stuarts, while affecting to favour the Hanoverian succession. He had ousted his old friend and patron the Duke of Marlborough, had allowed the conqueror of Ramillies and Blenheim, the man who had made our English arms as glorious as they had been in the days of the Henries and the Edwards, to be humiliated by that nation which his signal genius had elevated above all other nations. That great man, to whom England and England's Queen owed so much, had knelt at his sovereign's feet and besought her pardon and favour for his beautiful termagant, whose follies might have been forgiven for the sake of the husband who so blindly adored her. An ignominious end assuredly to royal friendship, and royal favour, and heroic genius unfortunately mated. Saddest page in the life of England's Captain-General, that scene in the palace, the kneeling conqueror, and the stubborn Queen's unrelenting wrath.