After being deprived of this last resource, he tried to get into the next parliament at several places, and spent near 5000 l. in unsuccessful attempts, which compleated his ruin.  And from this period he began to behave and live in a very different manner from what he had ever done before; wrote libellous pamphlets against Sir Robert Walpole and the ministry; and did many unjust things with respect to his relations; being distracted in his own private fortune, as, indeed, he was judged to be, in his senses; torturing his invention to find out ways of subsisting and eluding his ill-stars, his pride at the same time working him up to the highest pitches of resentment and indignation against all courts and courtiers.

His younger brother, the fellow of New-College, who had more weight with him than any body, had been a clerk under him in Ireland, and continued still in the office, and who bad fair for rising in it, died in the year 1723, and after that our author seemed to pay no regard to any person.  Mr. William Budgell was a man of very good sense, extremely steady in his conduct, and an adept in all calculations and mathematical questions; and had besides great good-nature and easiness of temper.

Our author as I before observed, perplexed his private affairs from this time as much as possible, and engaged in numberless law-suits, which brought him into distresses that attended him to the end of his life.

In 1727 Mr. Budgell had a 1000 l. given him by the late Sarah, duchess dowager of Marlborough, to whose husband (the famous duke of Marlborough) he was a relation by his mother’s side, with a view to his getting into parliament.  She knew he had a talent for speaking in public, and that he was acquainted with business, and would probably run any lengths against the ministry.  However this scheme failed, for he could never get chosen.

In the year 1730 and about that time, he closed in with the writers against the administration, and wrote many papers in the Craftsman.  He likewise published a pamphlet, intitled, A Letter to the Craftsman, from E. Budgell, Esq; occasioned by his late presenting an humble complaint against the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole, with a Post-script.  This ran to a ninth edition.  Near the same time too he wrote a Letter to Cleomenes King of Sparta, from E. Budgell, Esq; being an Answer Paragraph by Paragraph to his Spartan Majesty’s Royal Epistle, published some time since in the Daily Courant, with some Account of the Manners and Government of the Antient Greeks and Romans, and Political Reflections thereon.  And not long after there came out A State of one of the Author’s Cases before the House of Lords, which is generally printed with the Letter to Cleomenes:  He likewise published on the same occasion a pamphlet, which he calls Liberty and Property, by E. Budgell, Esq; wherein he complains of the seizure and loss of many valuable papers, and particularly a collection of Letters from Mr. Addison, lord Hallifax, Sir Richard Steele, and other people, which he designed to publish; and soon after he printed a sequel or second part, under the same title.