Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/35

 as a nest-egg, which her speculations increased to sixty thousand pounds. He adds that she refused to make any will, desiring all her wealth to go to her husband (Life, pp. 122–3).

In the course of the debates on the civil list of George I (before the king's arrival in this country), Pulteney supported the proposal of the elder Walpole that a reward of 100,000l. should be paid to anybody apprehending the Pretender in case of his attempting to land (, Walpole, iii. 28; cf. Memoirs of (the elder) Horatio Walpole, 2nd ed. 1808, i. 16). In the new ministry appointed by the king, Pulteney was included as secretary at war; and in April 1715 he was chosen by the House of Commons one of the committee of secrecy to which the papers concerning the late peace negotiations were referred. On 16 July 1716 he was named of the privy council. He remained an uncompromising adherent of the whig party so long as it continued under the joint guidance of Stanhope and Walpole; indeed, the three politicians were spoken of as ‘the Three Grand Allies.’ On 9 Jan. 1716 he moved the impeachment of Lord Widdrington, one of the rebels of 1715, and soon afterwards he opposed the motion for an address to the king to pardon those of the Scottish rebels who would lay down their arms (, iii. 29). When, in April 1717, the split in the government led to Townshend's dismissal from the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland and Walpole's resignation, Pulteney and Methuen resigned on the following day (11 April) (, i. 262–3). His alliance with Walpole continued apparently unbroken until 1721, when Walpole became first lord of the treasury. Then, to his profound mortification, Pulteney was not offered office. Walpole told him that ‘a peerage had been obtained for him,’ but this he brusquely declined. On the discovery of the so-called Atterbury plot in 1722, he was chosen to move an address of congratulation to the king, and acted as chairman of the select committee which drew up the report on the inquiry (ib. ii. 42–3). On 28 May 1723 he was appointed cofferer of the household, the (second) Earl of Godolphin being induced to make way for him, and for a time he supported the administration of which he had thus become a subordinate member. But the sop proved insufficient. In April 1725 he resisted Walpole's proposal for discharging the debts of the civil list, and then, for the first time, he and Walpole indulged in bitter personalities at each other's expense. Pulteney finally voted for the ministerial proposal. He explained afterwards that the king had personally appealed to him, and he felt that he had prevented the transaction from becoming a precedent (An Answer, &c., p. 52). But before the month was out, he was dismissed from his post as cofferer of the household; open war was thereupon declared between Walpole and himself (, iii. 32–5;, iii. 74–5). It was a personal quarrel, and did not spring from differences as to public policy.

On 9 Feb. 1726 Pulteney, seconded by his cousin Daniel, moved for a committee to report on the public debts, but he was decisively defeated (, iii. 36–8). The floodgates of partisan violence were now opened, and Pulteney concluded an unholy alliance with Bolingbroke, which found its most significant expression in the establishment of the journal called ‘The Craftsman.’ The first number, published 5 Dec. 1726, announced the purpose of the periodical to be the revelation of the tricks of Robin, the imaginary servant of the imaginary Caleb d'Anvers, bencher of Gray's Inn; and the design of exposing the wiles of that ‘craftsman’ continued to give unity to this journalistic effort, till it came to an end, 17 April 1736. It appeared (after the first) as a rule on Saturdays, and was republished, with a dedication to the people of England, in 1731–7, in 14 vols. 12mo. Its conductor was Nicolas Amherst [q. v.]; but Bolingbroke and Pulteney were its mainstays, together with Daniel Pulteney and a pseudonymous ‘Walter Raleigh,’ whom Pulteney himself was never able to identify. Bishop Newton (Life, pp. 127–9) is responsible for the information that Pulteney's papers were those signed ‘C.,’ or when written conjointly with Amherst, ‘C. A.’; he may also be suspected to have been concerned in some of those signed ‘C. D.’ (cf., Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 329; , History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed. i. 375 n.) Pulteney's contributions exhibited a journalistic versatility of no ordinary kind, coupled with scholarship and general literary ability. Ridicule was his favourite weapon, but no form of journalistic composition, from the elaborate essay to the brief letter with its string of unanswerable queries, came amiss to his hand. The bulk of his contributions fell between 1727 and 1729, but they extended over the whole life of the paper, and never lost sight of the paper's special aim of hunting down the prime minister.

In parliament Pulteney joined the Jacobite Sir William Wyndham [q. v.] in forming a new party out of malcontent whigs and Jacobites. They called themselves the ‘Patriots;’ and Wyndham and Pulteney