ABSTRACT
The decades of Whig success following the establishment of the Hanoverian monarchy also saw the personal controlling influence of Sir Robert Walpole rise to an exceptional level, both at court and in Parliament. Around him a complex and shifting set of allegiances and enmities developed. As opposition to Walpole grew, an alliance of Tories and dissident Whigs battled for control both of the future, by cultivating Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of the past, by attempting to show that they were the true heirs to a proud tradition of liberty in England, which Walpole as chief minister had betrayed. The political stratagem of using aspects of the royal past to give credibility to and gain support for a current point of view was revived. The familiar image of Queen Elizabeth was to play a significant part in this struggle, but not alone. She was to be joined by new royal heritage heroes. By the mid-i730S her position as most celebrated English Protestant monarch was to be rivalled, a generation after his death, by the Dutchman, William III.
