The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's First Prime Minister

by Edward Pearce

The year 1721 has many splendors, but there are also 13 public hanging days a year, drunkenness is endemic, and organized crime rampages through the streets. Only a generation earlier James II, suspected of conspiring to enforce Roman Catholicism and subordinate England to France, was driven out by the Whigs. In 1715 his son, the Pretender, failed to take the Crown by armed force. The new King, George I, an intelligent, moderate man, is cursed everywhere as a damned foreigner. James's followers, the Jacobites, conspire and are persecuted. In 1720, the South Sea Bubble, an attempt to finance state debt by runaway speculation, collapses. Ruined people mass in Westminster. The South Sea directors, says an MP, should be thrown into the sea. The Pretender could take over any day. Robert Walpole, once imprisoned for financial chicanery, assumes political control. When the rage subsides he becomes chief minister—or, a new title, "Prime Minister." He personally detects a Jacobite plot. Digging in, he buys parliamentary seats wholesale with secret service money. In a runaway theatrical success, "The Beggar's Opera", Walpole is compared with the criminal mastermind Jonathan Wild. But he will dominate King, Parliament, and Government until 1742. Dismissed in 1727 on the death of George I, he recruits the new King's clever wife, Caroline, and bounces cheerfully back. Coarse, corrupt, and cynical, Walpole sits on the Treasury Bench munching little Norfolk apples sent from the estate he is enlarging with political profit. This is Mr. Worldlywiseman, keeping England out of war for 20 years and setting up a stable and growing economy. All politics of a kind we can recognize begin with Robert Walpole. And here, in Edward Pearce's elegant book, he is brought vividly back to life.

Genres: History, Biography

496 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Edward Robin Pearce was an English political journalist and writer, known for being a leader writer for The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, and writing a number of biographies of political figures.

Reviews

[Pj Mensel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a well written and informative biography

I really enjoyed this bio. Lots of context and measured judgment by the author. Right level of detail and not so dated as many older biography. In you are interested in Walpole read this general bio

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good biography of Britain first first minister. Much of British political life lies in a continuum from Walpole - the patronage state and old corruption being the most obvious. He was a political genius who stabilised the Hanoverian succession and I think it fair to say kept Britain out of continental involvement until 1739 when he was forced into the War of Jenkin's Ear. They are ringing the bells and soon they will be wringing their hands.