Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole (1676-1745), British statesman, commonly regarded as Britain's first prime minister (1721-1742).

Walpole was born on August 26, 1676, at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, and educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. He entered Parliament in 1701 and swiftly developed a reputation as an effective spokesman for Whig policy. This brought him to the attention of the Duke of Marlborough, and in 1708 he was appointed secretary at war, and in 1710 he became treasurer of the navy. However, he lost his position when the Whig government was defeated in an election the same year. He became chief spokesman for the opposition until in 1712 he was impeached and found guilty of corruption by a vindictive Tory Parliament, and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London.

On the accession of the first Hanoverian king of England, George I, in 1714, Walpole, who had been a supporter of the German-born monarch, was restored to the Cabinet, becoming first lord of the treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in October 1715. Because of a conflict among the king's advisers, Walpole and his brother-in-law Charles Townshend resigned in 1717, but they continued to exercise considerable influence as opponents of government policy. Walpole eventually returned to the Cabinet as paymaster general of the forces in 1720. The acumen of his banker meant that he avoided entrapment in a financial crisis that year caused by heavy speculation in the stock of the South Sea Company, a corporation founded in 1711 for the purpose of assuming the national debt (see South Sea Bubble). However, many other members of the government were accused of manipulating the value of the stock, and Walpole skilfully protected the court and the Whig leadership from political disaster. As a result, in April 1721 Walpole was appointed first lord of the treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Townshend as secretary of state for foreign affairs. His position was further solidified by the exposure of the Jacobite Plot of Francis Atterbury.

Walpole consolidated Whig power by exploiting the system of royal patronage, using appointments to offices in the Church, armed forces, and royal household to build up a party of support in the House of Commons. He secured large legislative majorities because his popular policies of continued peace and low taxation reflected the desires of Parliament, and he displayed an unsurpassed ability to unite the members on political issues. Because of his extensive political power and influence on the domestic and foreign policies of Great Britain during this period, Walpole is considered to have been the country's first prime minister, although the title itself did not come into common use until much later in the century and became official only in 1905.

Walpole’s ministry was rarely free from crisis. He survived the accession of George II, who was looking to promote his favourite, Spencer Compton, only through his influence with the queen, Caroline of Ansbach. His use of patronage, which opponents stigmatized as corruption, caused a lively literary opposition led by Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, and Alexander Pope, and he was the butt of many cartoons. His attempts in 1733 to raise an excise tax on the import of wine and tobacco, to shift the tax burden away from landowners to merchants, caused widespread opposition and seriously jeopardized his support within the Whig Party.

It was foreign affairs that proved to be his downfall. His pursuit of peace at all costs had enabled him to reduce the national debt and kept Britain out of the War of Polish Succession, but an increasingly bitter trade dispute with Spain and the criticism from young Whigs such as William Pitt forced him into the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739. Although he won the election of 1741, a number of Whig politicians opposed his conduct of the war, and he resigned in February 1742.

Knighted in 1725, Walpole was created Earl of Orford in 1742, and continued to remain active in government until his death. In 1735 he received from the king the gift of 10, Downing Street as a home, which has remained the London base of British prime ministers ever since.