 Gideon offered his services, both private and political, to Robert Walpole and his ruling Whiggish government under the new Hanoverian monarchy.The first major conflict that he helped to financed was the War of Jenkins' Ear, which pitted the British Empire against the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean and New Granada.The Spanish Inquisition was still active and many of the Sephardi traders in the West Indies consequently viewed the Spanish cause in the conflict as potentially threatening to their trade interests.