Early Life

Robert Walpole was born into minor Norfolk nobility in 1676. He was the fifth child of 17, and third son.  He was educated at Eton where he befriended a few who would be politically useful to him, including Charles Townshend. It was originally intended that he would go into the Church, but whilst he was studying at Cambridge in 1698, his elder brother died (his oldest brother had died in the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690), leaving him the heir, and he was recalled by his father to run the family’s Houghton estate.   When his father died in 1700, Robert moved to secure his parliamentary seat, to which he was elected in 1701, aged 24.

Walpole established himself quickly in Parliament. Affable and good humoured, he found his way into the right circles, and soon had friends and connections across both houses. He was also clever, learning about the procedures of the House, and shepherding legislation through parliament. Townshend also invited Walpole to join the famous ‘Kit-Cat club’, a drinking club for the Whig elite.

The death of King William III in 1702, and the accession of Queen Anne, saw the Whig ministers leave government, replaced by Tories. This shift in power allowed Walpole to make his name amongst the opposition Whigs.  In 1705, another election put the Whigs even with the Tories, and several Whigs entered Cabinet, including Walpole. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Walpole was Secretary of State for War. In 1710, Anne dismissed the most prominent Whigs (whom she had never liked) from her government, with Walpole leaving office soon afterwards, and an election followed soon afterwards. The Whigs were seen as the war party, and the Tories as favouring a peace agreement with France. The Tories won, and the Whigs departed from power. After this, the Tories chose to investigate the departed Whig ministers, including Walpole, succeeding in tarnishing Walpole’s name, and having him expelled from the Commons and imprisoned in the Tower of London in January 1712.

This might have been the end of a lesser politician. But for Robert Walpole it was a huge boost to his career. During the six months he spent in the Tower, he became a Whig celebrity and his name a rallying cry for those opposed to the Tories. He was released in July, and won back his seat of King’s Lynn in the 1713 election. Now he was one of the most well known politicians in the country.

Queen Anne died the following year. She was succeeded by George, the elector of Hanover, who became King George I. George spoke only rudimentary English and preferred to spend long periods of time in Hanover. George also loathed the Tories, who he associated with the exiled Jacobite dynasty (many Tories still had sympathies with the ‘Prince over the Water’, the exiled ‘Pretender’, James Stuart). George’s fears were not assuaged by a failed Jacobite rising in 1715.

From 1714-17, Walpole was back in government as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was during this time that he created the ‘sinking fund’ a device to lower the national debt. However, in 1717, he resigned from government, after factional politics saw the removal of his friend Townshend. In 1719, Earl Stanhope, the predominant minister, tried to freeze the current membership of the House of Lords. Walpole took the lead in resisting the measure in the Commons and inflicted a major defeat on Stanhope’s government.^[1] Weakened, Stanhope sought to broaden his ministry and asked Walpole to return to government again soon afterwards.

The South Sea Company in 1720 changed everything. For months, the price of South Sea Company stock had been rising, after the government had converted debt into stock. The price of the stock rose, and a frenzy began, as thousands of people bought shares hoping to get rich quickly. When the bubble burst, many were ruined, and the political elite was humiliated.

First Lord of the Treasury

With his political opponents discredited by the South Sea Bubble, Walpole was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in April 1721. Walpole, who posed as the defender of the people from speculative bankers. Walpole stabilised the markets, protected the king and much of the political class, while also ensuring that the fallout from the crisis tarnished his political enemies.

Walpole’s main ambition and policy can be summarised in one word: stability. He wanted to secure the Hanoverian succession and consolidate the existing political system. He knew that stability lay in harmony between the country’s landowning and business interests. He sought to keep both the land tax low, and create a good environment for business.

He was able to guarantee majorities for the King’s government, and his ability to do so is a recognisable feature of the modern job of Prime Minister. Walpole had around 100 ‘payroll’ MPs out of 558 elected in total (in 1715). But, thanks to patronage, good intelligence, and his hard work in winning over Whig and independent MPs, he was able to orchestrate considerable majorities for the government.

The ‘Atterbury Plot’ in 1722 gave Walpole the opportunity to establish his anti-Jacobite credentials. Walpole ordered many of the plotters arrested, and Habeas Corpus was suspended for a year, with a heavy fine placed on Roman Catholics. Soldiers were deployed to Hyde Park. One member of the conspiracy, Christopher Layer, was executed at Tyburn. Henceforth, Walpole would always put ‘Jacobite intelligence’ personally to the King.^[2]

He later said that the reason for his peace policy was that:  ‘Averse to war, from opinion, from interest and from fear of the Pretender… If (he said) there was a war the King’s Crown would be fought for in the land’.[3]

When George I died in 1727, George II considered replacing him with Lord Wilmington. But he quickly recognised that Walpole was indispensable due to his command of the Commons. He also acquired a valuable new ally in George’s wife, Queen Caroline who could influence the court in Walpole’s favour.

Walpole was not very interested in foreign policy and did not know very much about it. In court, there were also other voices to whom George was more likely to listen. Northern Secretary Lord Townshend, Lord Carteret, and even Count Bothmer, his Hanoverian adviser, were all more important influence on foreign policy during the 1720s. Walpole worked well with Townshend, who was a friend, but loathed Carteret (sending him to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1723). Most of these figures had left the scene by 1730; Townshend had retired, Carteret only returned in 1730 when Walpole was firmly in control, and Bothmer died in 1732. Only by the 1730s was there really a Walpole foreign policy.

What influence Walpole had during the 1720s, and the main thrust of his foreign policy during the 1730s was to promote peace with Europe at all costs. In this respect, he shared quite similar attitudes to his Tory opponents.

Consequently, Britain negotiated a peace treaty with Spain in 1729 and an alliance with Austria in 1731 that recognised the Pragmatic Sanction (disregarding Salic law and allowing Maria Theresa to inherit the Austrian throne).[4]

France grew more powerful during the 1730s, concluding a Bourbon ‘Family Compact’ with Spain in 1733 – a deep threat to British interests. Meanwhile, the Treaty with Austria did not achieve the deterrent effect Walpole had hoped for, because his overtures to Versailles continued, leaving Vienna suspicious.

Walpole famously boasted during the subsequent War of the Polish Succession (of 1733-35) ‘there are 50,000 men slain this year in Europe, and not one Englishman’. However, his critics believed that this alienated Britain from its continental allies, like Austria, and strengthened France and Spain, who had gained victories at Vienna’s expense.

As the 1730s developed, so did the opposition of the ‘Patriotic’ faction, part led by Frederick, Prince of Wales. They began to rally around foreign affairs, portraying Walpole’s unwillingness to confront Britain’s opponents abroad as a great weakness. They wanted to confront Britain’s continental enemies and smash Spanish dominion in the Caribbean.[5]

The Excise Crisis was one of Walpole’s few real mistakes. There was a political storm from late 1732 to early 1733, when Walpole proposed to extend excise arrangements on wine and tobacco. A move so unpopular that he was even burned in effigy by the London crowd.^[6] Opposition to Walpole became ‘the theme of Coffee-Houses, Taverns, and Gin-Shops, the Discourse of Artificiers, the Cry of the Streets, the Entertainment of Lacquies, the Prate of Wenches, and the Bugbear of Children’.^[7] His majority shrank to just 17 and he had to drop the measures and make a desperate personal appeal to Whigs to keep supporting the ministry.^[8]

Robinocracy

Walpole’s power stemmed from an empire of patronage that became known as the ‘Robinocracy’.

In Walpole’s day, MPs did not receive a salary (nor would they until 1911), which simply opened opportunities for corruption.[9] According to Edward Pearce, Walpole ‘operated a species of private interest/public expenditure mini-welfare state for anyone able to elect a Member or persuade one to vote right’.[10]

The Secret Service Fund was supposed to be used for espionage but was in fact used by Walpole to win elections and buttress support. As it was officially part of the Civil List, the ultimate responsibility for the fund was the king’s, and it could be kept away from parliamentary scrutiny.[11]

Even the speaker of the House of Commons, Arthur Onslow, was on Walpole’s payroll.[12] One of the few things discovered by the Parliamentary Committee that investigated Walpole after his fall from power was how one prospective MP was given a ‘parcel of money’ for their election expenses worth £500, and that Walpole had spent over £50,000 in ten years on publishing pro-government propaganda.[13]

Some of the greatest writers of the day – including Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Henry Fielding – found themselves opposing (or supporting) Walpole. More generally, John Gay’s the Beggar’s Opera is a satire of Walpole’s Britain, with allusions to Walpole in the line ‘Robin of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty’.[14] Walpole cheerfully had Gay’s next play banned.[15] In Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, it is thought that the Flimnap, Treasurer to the Emperor of Lilliput, is also based on Walpole.

Walpole had his own ‘complete propaganda machine’ in which pro-government writers published in journals like the British Journal, the Daily Courant, the Flying Post, the Corn Cutters Journal, and the Free Briton.[16] Poets like Joseph Mitchell praised Walpole as the guardian of Britain’s stability:

How soon Britannia, wou’d thy Beauty fade?
What equal Hand wou’d hasten to thy Aid?
Long, very long, Ye Pow’rs, suspend his Fate
On Him depends the Safety of the State.
While He, our Atlas, its vast Burden bears,
What need to feat the Falling of the Spheres. [17]

Fall, 1739-42

Political pressure forced Walpole into war in October 1739 against Spain. Even then, Walpole had hoped that he wouldn’t have to run it; telling the Duke of Newcastle ‘This war is yours, you have had the conduct of it, I wish you joy of it’.[18] Soon it had changed into the continent-wide War of the Austrian Succession, which would see war brought to the British mainland in the form of the 1745 Jacobite uprising (The ’45). Walpole would not be in power to see it though, he resigned in February 1742.

As he grew older, it became clear to emerging and aspirant politicians that the Robinocracy would not last forever, and they began to increasingly associate with the opposition. In 1739, the Patriotic Whigs and opponents of Walpole won a major victory when they were able to force Walpole to accept a war policy against Spain.

Walpole was soon tarnished by the (correct) perception that he was an unenthusiastic warrior and by a military disaster in Cartagena des Indias. In the 1741 election Walpole was left with only a slim majority, and barely outnumbered his Tory and Patriotic Whig opponents.^[19]

After that election, Walpole lost a vote on the chairmanship of the committee of elections in December (242-238) and several narrow votes afterwards.^[20] On 28 January 1742, the government introduced a ‘Ministerial petition against the return of 2 Members of Parliament for Chippenham’, and it was defeated in the House of Commons by 1 vote (235-236). Walpole saw this defeat as a vote of no confidence his ministry. It signalled that his majority was gone and he resigned shortly afterwards, appearing in the Commons for the last time on 2 February 1742.^[21]

Having finally defeated Walpole, his enemies conducted a parliamentary inquiry into the ministry’s activities. But, though they found evidence of corruption, Walpole had enough influence to have a few of his friends appointed to the inquiry committee, and, ultimately, the inquiry’s efforts came to nothing. Walpole retired to Houghton, living many of his final days there.

Robert Walpole died on 18 March 1745 at Arlington Street in London.

The towns of Walpole, Massachusetts and Orford, New Hampshire are named after him. His portrait is above the fireplace in Downing Street’s Cabinet Room.

[1] Leonard, British Prime Ministers, p. 16.

[2] Hatton, George I, p. 256.

[3] Williams, Whig Supremacy, p. 212

[4] Longford, Polite and Commercial People, p. 18

[5] Scott, Leviathan, pp. 298-300

[6] Black, George II, p. 142

[7] Quoted in Scott, Leviathan, p., 308.

[8] Longford, Polite and Commercial People, p. 30.

[9] https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/mps-pay-the-never-ending-controversy/

[10] Quoted in Leonard, p. 20.

[11] Blick and Jones, Power’s Elbow, p. 27 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-349-23188-1_2

[12] Blick and Jones, Premiership, p. 53.

[13] Blick and Jones, Power’s Elbow, pp. 35-7.

[14] Hal Gladfelder, Introduction to John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, p. xxi-xxii

[15] Blick and Jones, Power’s Elbow, p. 30.

[16] Blick and Jones, Power’s Elbow, p. 30-31.

[17] Sundt, Sir Robert Walpole’s Poets, p. 140.

[18] Leonard, British Prime Ministers, p. 26.

[19] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/parliament/1741

[20] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/parliament/1741

[21] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/parliament/1741