Hervey wrote detailed and brutally frank memoirs of the court of George II from 1727 to 1737. He gave a most unflattering account of the King, and of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and their family squabbles. For the Queen and her daughter, Princess Caroline, he had a genuine respect and attachment, and the Princess's affection for him was commonly said to be the reason for the close retirement in which she lived after his death. The manuscript of Hervey's memoirs was preserved by the family, but his son, Augustus John, 3rd Earl of Bristol, left strict injunctions that they should not be published until after the death of George III. In 1848 they were published under the editorship of J. W. Croker, but the manuscript had been subjected to a certain amount of mutilation before it came into his hands. Croker also softened in some cases the plainspokenness of the original. Hervey's account of court life and intrigues resembles in many points the memoirs of Horace Walpole, and the two books corroborate one another in many statements that might otherwise have been received with suspicion.