From the day of his dismissal to that of his ultimate triumph, Pulteney remained in opposition, forming the Patriot Whigs, a group of fellow Whigs who felt that Walpole was corrupt and tyrannical. Walpole attempt's 1730 at conciliation with the offer of Townshend's place and of a peerage was spurned. Pulteney's resentment was not confined to his speeches in parliament. With Bolingbroke he started, in December 1726, a periodical called "The Craftsman", and in its pages the minister was incessantly denounced for many years. Lord Hervey published an attack on the "Craftsman", and Pulteney, either openly or behind the person of Amhurst, its editor, replied to the attack. Whether the question at issue was the civil list, the excise, the income of the Prince of Wales, or the state of domestic affairs, Pulteney was ready with a pamphlet, and the minister or one of his friends came out with a reply. For his "Proper reply to a late scurrilous libel" ("Craftsman", 1731), an answer to "Sedition and defamation displayed," he was challenged to a duel by Lord Hervey; for another, "An answer to one part of an infamous libel entitled remarks on the Craftsman's indication of his two honourable patrons," he was in July 1731 struck off the roll of privy councillors and dismissed from the commission of the peace in several counties. In print Pulteney was inferior to Bolingbroke alone among the antagonists of Walpole, but in parliament, from which Bolingbroke was excluded, he excelled. When the sinking fund was appropriated in 1733 he led the denunciation; when the excise scheme in the same year was stirring popular feeling to its lowest depths the passion of the multitude broke out in his oratory. Walpole managed to avoid the fall of his ministry. Bolingbroke withdrew to France on the suggestion, it is said, of Pulteney, and the opposition was weakened by the dissensions of the leaders.