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 108 to 59. But it was significant that Lord Wilmington, who hoped to be Walpole's reversioner, and some other peers belonging to the government abstained from voting. Shippen's secession was afterwards explained as an act of gratitude to Walpole for having saved one of his friends from a prosecution for treasonable correspondence. Its more probable cause discloses one of the most curious episodes of Walpole's political career. A letter has recently been printed from the old pretender at Rome to his agent, Colonel O'Brien, at Paris, dated 1 Sept. 1734 (Hodgkin MSS. p. 235). From this it appears that a friendly overture having been made on behalf of Walpole to O'Brien, the pretender directed a cautious reply to be made by O'Brien to Walpole's friend Winnington, then a lord of the admiralty. Among Walpole's papers was found an original letter from the pretender at Rome, dated 10 July 1739, written to the Jacobite Thomas Carte [q. v.] for delivery to the agent of some important personage in England who had demanded pledges as to the church and the safety of the reigning sovereign in the event of a restoration (, vol. iii. p. xxxiii, App. p. xlviii). Mr. Morley has summed up the probabilities against the identification of this personage with Walpole; but the discovery of the letter of 1734 inclines the balance the other way. It appears also to have been well known to a few persons that Walpole at critical moments was in the habit of buying off the Jacobite section of the opposition by encouraging hopes in the pretender. Sunderland had, with George I's consent, done the same thing before him (, ii. 41). George II himself one day mentioned the fact that Walpole knew the pretender's hand (, Letters, i. 182). Lord Orrery, the pretender's secretary, is said to have received a pension of 2,000l. a year from the government (see Walpoliana, i. 63). His successor, Colonel Cecil, was quite persuaded that Walpole contemplated a restoration, and by this means he received early information of the Jacobite schemes (, Anecdotes, p. 37). Another intermediary was the Duchess of Buckingham [see ]. ‘Sir Robert always carried them (the pretender's letters) to George II, who endorsed and returned them’ (, Reminiscences, vol. i. p. cxlii). That this correspondence was simply a piece of parliamentary tactics there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. The secession of the Jacobites in 1741 ‘broke the opposition to pieces’ (Lord Chesterfield to Lord Stair, Stair Annals, ii. 268). There was no doubt in the minds of the defeated party as to the real cause of the defection, and ‘Chesterfield was despatched to Avignon to solicit by the Duke of Ormonde's means an order from the pretender to the Jacobites to concur roundly in any measures for Sir Robert's destruction’ (, Memoirs, i. 52). The pretender, chagrined at having been hoodwinked, despatched ‘at least a hundred letters’ which were transmitted to his friends, in November 1741, in this sense (Etough in, i. 687 n.)

Meanwhile, at midsummer 1741, the general election had taken place. The Scottish boroughs followed the Duke of Argyll, encouraged, it was suspected, by the treachery of Islay. The Cornish boroughs fell away to Lord Falmouth and to Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc, the electioneering agent employed by their duke, the Prince of Wales (, Parl. Hist. of Cornwall, p. xvi). Walpole foresaw the end of his political career. He, who had been distinguished by his boisterous spirits and hearty laughter, now sat ‘without speaking and with his eyes fixed for an hour together’ (Horace Walpole to H. Mann, 19 Oct. 1741). On 1 Dec. 1741 the new parliament met. It was known that the ministerialists and the opposition were, as Pulteney said, near equilibrium. A long attack having been made by Pulteney on the conduct of the war, Walpole accepted his challenge by fixing 21 Jan. for the consideration of the state of the nation (8 Dec.) In the meanwhile the state of parties would be determined by the results of the trials of contested election returns, which were fought out on political grounds. The first of these was a division on the Bossiney election on 9 Dec. 1741, in which ministers had a majority of six (Commons' Journals, xxiv. 17). On 16 Dec. Walpole's candidate for the chairmanship of the committee on elections [see ] was defeated by four votes (Parl. Hist. xii. 323). On 17 Dec. the ministerialist members for Bossiney were unseated by six votes (ib. p. 322 n.), and five days later (22 Dec.) those for Westminster by four votes. This last defeat produced an immense moral effect. Upon 24 Dec. the house adjourned till 18 Jan. Walpole, still unwilling to resign, employed the recess in an attempt to detach the Prince of Wales from the opposition by an offer from the king of an additional 50,000l. a year to his income (5 Jan. 1742). The prince returned a refusal to entertain the proposal so long as the minister remained in power. But the failure of the negotiations inspired Walpole with the hope that the king would refuse to consult the leaders of the whig opposition, while the tories