Walpole, Sir Robert, 1st earl of Orford

Walpole, Sir Robert, 1st earl of Orford (1676–1745). Traditionally known as Britain's first prime minister. From a Norfolk gentry family, Walpole was the Whig MP for Castle Rising (1701–2) and King's Lynn (1702–12, 1713–42). His first posts were as secretary at war (1708) and treasurer of the navy (1710). His part in the administration of the War of the Spanish Succession and his management of the trial of Dr Sacheverell earned him the hatred of the Tory Party and he was dismissed in 1710, impeached for corruption, sent to the Tower (1711), and expelled from Parliament (1712). At the Hanoverian succession he rejoined the government, along with his brother-in-law Viscount Townshend, as paymaster-general, being promoted to 1st lord of the Treasury and chancellor of the Exchequer in 1715. In 1717 he, Townshend, and several followers left the Sunderland/Stanhope ministry. During the ensuing Whig schism Walpole opposed the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts (1718), and successfully defeated the Peerage Bill in the Commons (1719). In April 1720, with most of the schismatic Whigs, he rejoined the government in the office of paymaster-general.

Walpole was not the first ‘prime minister’; several of his immediate predecessors (such as Sunderland, Harley, and even Godolphin) were so regarded, and the term was in common use (though often pejoratively). The starting date of Walpole's premiership is a matter of some controversy. One historian has recently suggested that it should be dated from 1720 (since he was in control of the Treasury as paymaster-general, John Aislabie, the chancellor of the Exchequer, being a figurehead), rather than from the traditional date of his promotion to the chancellorship in 1721. Despite his brilliant financial acumen, which saved the administration and the dynasty in 1720–1 from the disaster of the South Sea bubble, and his control of the nation's finances and the secret service money (the major source of patronage), neither of these dates marks his true dominance of the ministry. Both Stanhope (who died prematurely in 1721), and more particularly Sunderland (who also died unexpectedly in April 1722), retained the confidence of George I until their deaths. Until 1724, when he was manœuvred into the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, Carteret (a protégé of Sunderland's favoured by the king) was a potential rival. Further, from the very beginning of the reconciliation of the Whigs in 1720, Townshend was a major force to be reckoned with, particularly through his control of foreign policy after 1721 (an area dear to the king) and the House of Lords after 1722. Townshend remained in office until his resignation in 1730, and for most of the 1720s the ministry should be seen as a duumvirate. Only in the late 1720s did Walpole become the unquestioned prime minister, partly through forcing the most talented of his Whig opponents, led by Pulteney, into opposition. These self-proclaimed ‘patriots’ worked fitfully with the Tories in the 1730s, but were no real threat to Walpole, until he began to lose his grip in the early 1740s.

Walpole's major contribution to politics was his development of the cabinet system, of the ‘party of the crown’ (which he based on the work of Harley) through extensive use of patronage, and of the Commons as the centre of parliamentary power. His refusal of a peerage in 1723 (it went to his son), which astounded contemporaries, signalled the beginning of the latter development.

Following the South Sea crisis, Walpole's establishment of the Whig hegemony was largely accomplished as a result of his handling of the Atterbury plot in 1722–3, which he used to drive home the fear of Jacobitism, a label he had great success in attaching to his Tory opponents, and which, in the final analysis, prevented effective and sustained co-operation between them and the Whig ‘patriots’. The smear of Jacobitism proved very effective for the rest of his ministry. His ruthless control of political patronage was the foundation on which he built his control of the administration. This is best illustrated by his removal in 1734 of several peers from colonelships of regiments for voting against the government, though such positions were, in effect, regarded as private property, and the dismissals caused consternation amongst the political élite.

His sure grip on politics occasionally wavered. One such occasion was the Excise scheme in 1733, which aroused so much opposition that Walpole was forced into dropping the proposal before the second reading. Another was his loss of favour in Scotland by his too repressive measures over the Porteous riots in 1736. Yet another was his opposition to war with Spain in 1739, to which he was forced to agree by both the patriot opposition and members of his own government. The poor handling of the war eventually led to his downfall in February 1742 as he lost control of the House of Commons, one of two essential props to his power. The other was the support of the monarch (first George I, and then George II, though the latter's was uncertain before his accession in 1727), which he retained to the end, along with that of Queen Caroline who, until her death in 1737, provided invaluable support.

Walpole was created earl of Orford upon his resignation, and helped from the Upper House to baffle efforts to impeach him for corruption. He took part in debates in the Lords, and continued to give advice to George II when asked. He devoted much of his time to Houghton in Norfolk, the palatial house he had built and stocked with art treasures. He died in debt

Clyve Jones

Bibliography

Dickinson, H. T. , Walpole and the Whig Supremacy (1973);
Holmes, G. , ‘Sir Robert Walpole’, in Holmes, G. (ed.), Politics, Religion and Society in England, 1679–1742 (1986);
Plumb, J. H. , Sir Robert Walpole (2 vols., 1956–60).