Note 154 — Chapter VI

Sir Spencer Compton, son of the Earl of Northampton, was Speaker of the House of Commons and Knight of the Bath in the reign of King George the First. On the accession of the present King, when Sir Robert Walpole went to receive his orders, he bad him go for them to Sir Spencer Compton. This was a plain declaration! The first business was to prepare the new King’s speech to his Privy Council, which the new Minister was so little able to draw, that he was forced to apply for it to the old one, who drew it—willingly, it may be believed; and the Queen knew how to make the request and condescension have their effects. He was then created Baron, and afterwards Earl of Wilmington and Knight of the Garter, and made President of the Council. On the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole, he succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury, with the new Commissioners, but had so little influence even at that Board, that Sandys, Rushout, and Gybbon, used to put the disposal of places to the vote, and carry them against him and his nephew Compton. He died in about a year and a half after he had been raised to this uneasy situation. He was the most formal solemn man in the world, but a great lover of private debauchery: after missing the first Ministership, he entered into a secret league with Mr. Pulteney, which Sir R. Walpole discovered by the means of Mr. Pulteney’s gentleman, who betrayed to him the letter he was carrying from his master to Lord Wilmington. As this was soon after a treaty between them, Lord Wilmington was much shocked when Sir Robert reproached him with it, and continued so steady for the future, that when the famous motion was made against that Minister, he went to vote in the House of Lords with a blister on his head, after having been confined to his bed for some days with a fever.