design. He was sure of having the Whigs against him if he made the
attempt, and he was not sure of having the Tories for him.

In this state of confusion and distress, to which he had reduced
himself and us, you remember the part he acted. He was the spy of
the Whigs, and voted with us in the morning against those very
questions which he had penned the night before with Walpole and
others. He kept his post on terms which no man but he would have
held it on, neither submitting to the Queen, nor complying with his
friends. He would not, or he could not, act with us; and he
resolved that we should not act without him as long as he could
hinder it. The Queen's health was very precarious, and at her death
he hoped by these means to deliver us up, bound as it were hand and
foot, to our adversaries. On the foundation of this merit he
flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened
at least the rest of the party to him. By his secret negotiations
at Hanover, he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled
to that Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty's
reign, have as much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the
Queen. He was weak enough to boast of this, and to promise his good
offices voluntarily to several: for no man was weak enough to think
them worth being solicited. In a word, you must have heard that he
answered to Lord Dartmouth and to Mr. Bromley, that one should keep
the Privy Seal, and the other the seals of Secretary; and that Lord
Cowper makes no scruple of telling how he came to offer him the
seals of Chancellor. When the King arrived, he went to Greenwich
with an affectation of pomp and of favour. Against his suspicious
character, he was once in his life the bubble of his credulity; and
this delusion betrayed him into a punishment more severe in my sense
than all which has happened to him since, or than perpetual exile;