Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole was a Whig politician, member of the Parliament, and is considered to be the first prime minister of Britain.
Contents
History
Walpole first won election to the House of Commons in 1701, representing Castle Riding. The next year he received the seat of a neighboring pocket borough.
He was appointed to Anne's government in 1705.
Following the Sacheverell riots and amid mounting opposition to English involvement in the War of Spanish Succession, the Tories won a majority and took power. The new Harley government quickly charged Walpole with taking bribes for contracts, found him guilty, and sentenced him to 6 months in the Tower of London. He returned to the Commons in 1713.
With the Hanoverian succession and a Whig victory in 1714 elections, Walpole returned to government.
George I and Stanhope pursued a foreign policy strongly oriented around Hanoverian interests, drawing opposition from several influential Whigs. The Whig Split emerged by 1717, with Walpole and Townshend leading this faction.
The split healed after about three years, and both Walpole and Townshend returned to government. Nearly simultaneously though, the South Sea Company collapsed. The company had been granted a monopoly on slave trade in the southern Pacific and Atlantic, which attracted interest from private finance. The government sold shares in the company to buy back public debt, effectively consolidating the national debt into a chartered company. The company itself was not profitable, and inevitably collapsed. The subsequent scandal consumed nearly all of the establishment Whigs that had been involved in government since before the Split. Now, Walpole emerged as the dominant remaining member of government.
From this point, he is considered to be the first prime minister. The major evidence towards this determination actually comes from the reign of George II. The court relationship between George II and Walpole was fractious at best, and upon the coronation in 1727, his dismissal was widely anticipated. Instead he was retained. He continued to demonstrate significant influence over foreign policy, up to denying intervention in the War of Polish Succession over the wishes of both George and the wider Whig Party.
Walpole was forced to resign from government in 1742. He took a peerage but remained an influential advisor to the successive government led by Compton but centered on Pelham.
Policies
Walpole significant reined in the Hanoverian foreign policy, especially of George II. He and Pelham-Holles shifted foreign policy away from alignment with France and towards alignment with Austria. The Anglo-French and Quadruple Alliances were traded for the Anglo-Austrian Alliance, established by the Treaty of Vienna in 1731.
He maintained the status quo--a hawkish policy towards Spain as evidenced by the War of Spanish Succession and the War of the Quadruple Alliance. When Spain attempted to recapture Gibraltar in 1727, he engaged in the Anglo-Spanish War. When the Spanish navy overreached in trade interventions, he launched the retaliatory in the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739.
At the same time, Walpole managed a careful diplomacy towards Austria. He refused to join in the War of Polish Succession, labeling it as a war of aggression. He financed Maria Theresa in the War of Austrian Succession.
Walpole pushed a policy of lowering land taxes, with the intent of switching the internal revenues toward excise and customs taxes.