He entered parliament in 1710 and became Secretary at War in the Tory ministry in 1712 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1713.
At the start of the reign of the Hanoverian King George I (1714-1727), Bolingbroke fled into exile in France to join the court of the Old Pretender, and Wyndham took his place in England as the leader of the Jacobites.