Pope was born of a Catholic family in London in 1688. Pope's Tory friends had been in power until the unexpected close, by her sudden death, of the reign of Queen Anne. Their great triumph was the Peace of Utrecht, ending a long and desultory war with France. With the Hanoverian George I's ascension, the hopes for a Jacobite Restoration were over. During Pope's later years, the Whigs were in power -- Bollinger exiled, and Walpole in control, bringing prosperity with security. Much of the imagery of Pope, and Swift, lifts from shifting winds of credit and banking. He was a critic of the materialism of a commercial society. There is a presumptuous and daring accuracy in his verses. Satire with a moral. Still, his politics is a dragon with only one sulphurus nostril.