al new members
took the oaths. Sir Paul Methuen, Treasurer of the Household, the author
of the commercial treaty with Portugal which still bears his name, moved
an address of condolence and congratulation to the King. The motion was
seconded by Sir Robert Walpole, and as the formal record puts it, "voted
_nemine contradicente_." A committee was appointed to draw up the
address, Sir Robert Walpole, of course, being one of its members. The
chairman of the committee paid Walpole the compliment of handing him the
pen, "whereupon," as a contemporary account reports it, "Sir Robert,
without hesitation and with a masterly hand, drew up the said address."
Walpole could be courtly enough when he thought fit. He seems to have
distinctly outdone the House of Lords in the fervor of his grief for the
late King and his devotion {280} to the present. The death of George the
First, Walpole pronounced to be "a loss to this nation which your Majesty
alone could possibly repair." Having mentioned the fact that the death of
George the First had plunged all England into grief, Walpole changed, "as
by the stroke of an enchanter's wand," this winter of our discontent into
glorious summer. "Your immediate succession," he assured the King,
"banished all our grief."

[Sidenote: 1727--"Honest Shippen"]

On Monday, July 3d, the Commons met to consider the amount of supply to
be granted to his Majesty. Walpole, as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
stated to the House that the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds,
granted to the late King "for the support of his household and of the
honor and dignity of the Crown," had fallen short every year, and that
ministers had been obliged to make it up in other ways. The present
sovereign's necessary expenses were likely to increase, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer explained, "by reason of the largeness of his family" and
the necessity of "settling a household for his royal consort." The
Chancellor of the Exchequer therefore moved that the entire revenues of
the Civil List, which produced about one hundred and thirty thousand
pounds a year above the yearly sum of seven hundred thousand pounds
already mentioned, should be settled on his Majesty during life. The
motion was supported by several members, but Mr. Shippen, the earnest and
able, though somewhat eccentric, Jacobite and Tory, had the spirit and
courage to oppose it. Shippen's speech was expressed in a spirit of
loyalty, but was direct a