King responded angrily and in consequence Prince George and his wife Caroline of Ansbach were banished from St James's Palace, forced to leave behind their three daughters. They took up residence at Leicester House, spending their summers at Richmond Lodge near the River Thames, and established a rival court to George. This attracted politicians hostile to the Stanhope government, particularly the opposition Whigs. Both the Jacobites and foreign powers opposed to Britain tried to take advantage of the royal rift. Walpole and his followers allied with the Tories, to whom they had recently been bitterly opposed, to oppose new proposals by Stanhope's government. A significant victory for the opposition came with the government failure to impeach Harley, now Lord Oxford, for his role in the Peace of Utrecht. After two years imprisonment in the Tower of London, he was released in July 1717. Walpole strongly attacked funding the new war with Spain, fought in alliance with France. He joined with Tories to support reductions in military spending. A particularly significant victory occurred in 1719 when the Peerage Bill was defeated. This was a proposal to perpetually limit the membership of the Lords to existing members and their heirs, drawn up partly in response to Harley's controversial creation of a dozen new peers in 1711 to create a Tory majority in the Whig-dominated House of Lords. As Stanhope had recently been made an Earl by the King, Walpole mockingly suggested he was "now desirous to shut the door after him". Reconciliation Although in 1719 the Duke of Newcastle had suggested that Walpole was so close to the Tories, that at the next election the Whig government would have little trouble in portraying them as part of a single party with the Jacobites by 1720 the Whig rivals began to move towards each other again. A formal reconciliation was agreed between the King and his son. Both Walpole and Townshend returned to office in June 1720, becoming respectively Paymaster of the Forces and Lord President of the Council. Stanhope continued as first minister. Despite assurances given to her by Walpole, the Princess and her husband were not given full access to their children. Although she remained politically aligned with him, the Princess considered that she had been exploited by Walpole during the reconciliation. Aftermath During the scandal over the South Sea Bubble, many prominent Whigs were forced to leave office. Although Walpole