not only turned the Whigs out of office, he altered permanently the political complexion of the House of Lords.

From the time of the Revolution of 1688 to the death of George II.

in 1760, the Lords were Whiggish, and the majority of English nobles held Whig principles.
They were, on the whole, men of better education than the average member of the House of Commons, who was in most cases a fox-hunting squire, of the Squire Western type.

The House of Lords stood in the way of the Commons when, in the Tory reaction of 1701, the Commons proposed to impeach Somers, the Whig Chancellor, a high-minded and skilful lawyer, "courteous and complaisant, humane and benevolent," for his share in the Second Partition Treaty of 1699, and this was the beginning of a bitter contest between the Tory Commons and the Whig Lords.

An attempt was made by the Commons to impeach Walpole on his fall in 1742, but the Lords threw out a Bill proposing to remit the penalties to which his prosecutor might be liable, and the King made Walpole a peer.