A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet from his younger brother, Richard Waverley, the father of our hero.  Sir Everard had inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory or High-Church predilections and prejudices, which had distinguished the house of Waverley since the Great Civil War.  Richard, on the contrary, who was ten years younger, beheld himself born to the fortune of a second brother, and anticipated neither dignity nor entertainment in sustaining the character of Will Wimble.  He saw early, that, to succeed in the race of life, it was necessary he should carry as little weight as possible.  Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the existence of compound passions in the same features at the same moment:  it would be no less difficult for the moralist to analyse the mixed motives which unite to form the impulse of our actions.  Richard Waverley read and satisfied himself, from history and sound argument, that, in the words of the old song,

     Passive obedience was a jest,
     And pshaw! was non-resistance;

yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove hereditary prejudice, could Richard have anticipated that his elder brother, Sir Everard, taking to heart an early disappointment, would have remained a batchelor at seventy-two.  The prospect of succession, however remote, might in that case have led him to endure dragging through the greater part of his life as ’Master Richard at the Hall, the baronet’s brother,’ in the hope that ere its conclusion he should be distinguished as Sir Richard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, successor to a princely estate, and to extended political connexions as head of the county interest in the shire where it lay.  But this was a consummation of things not to be expected at Richard’s outset, when Sir Everard was in the prime of life, and certain to be an acceptable suitor in almost any family, whether wealth or beauty should be the object of his pursuit, and when, indeed, his speedy marriage was a report which regularly amused the neighbourhood once a year.  His younger brother saw no practicable road to independence save that of relying upon his own exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant both to reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir Everard in High Church and in the house of Stewart.  He therefore read his recantation at the beginning of his career, and entered life as an avowed Whig, and friend of the Hanover succession.

The ministry of George the First’s time were prudently anxious to diminish the phalanx of opposition.  The Tory nobility, depending for their reflected lustre upon the sunshine of a court, had for some time been gradually reconciling themselves to the new dynasty.  But the wealthy country gentlemen of England, a rank which retained, with much of ancient manners and primitive integrity, a great proportion of obstinate and unyielding prejudice, stood aloof in haughty and sullen opposition,