An extended profile on Sir Robert Walpole By Alijan Kirk
single Prime Minister from before their lifetimes, excluding Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, depending on how young you are. To put it simply, I want more people to know who our Prime Ministers were. I personally believe Lancashire to be one of the greatest counties in this country, if not the single greatest. I am determined to have Lancashire champion not just local history, but national history because we are a county that goes above and beyond. So over the next year, I am going to profile each of our Prime Ministers, get in a few key points and maybe even throw in something local about them. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to give just the facts straight up or add my own personal spin. It can be a surprise for you all. I’m intending to cover five Prime Ministers an issue over the next year, and I thought we could get the ball rolling with an extended profile on our de facto first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole.
One of my greatest annoyances when it comes to politics has to be just how uneducated people are about it. As a public, we’re expected to vote for who we want in power, yet we know so little about them and what they stand for. Don’t even get me started on political history. History is getting more and more under-appreciated, and if you want to know about politics, you don’t just need to know what’s happening now, you need to know what happened in the past.
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big part of American History education is devoted to making sure students know each and every President of the United States. Yet in Britain, I would be shocked if the average person could name a 20
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
Robert Walpole will always have an important role in British political history as being our first and longest serving Prime Minister. A Whig and the MP for King’s Lynn, Walpole benefited from the new King, George I, having a distrust of the Tory party. The King believed that the Tories opposed his right to succeed the throne. Thanks to this, the Whigs ascended to power where they would remain for the next fifty years. Another benefit for Walpole was that his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend was one of the most dominating figures in the Cabinet, which Walpole was now in as Paymaster of the Forces. In 1715, the head of the administration, Lord Halifax, died and within the year, Walpole had been appointed both First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, the Cabinet was often divided over important issues, usually split by Walpole and Lord Townshend on one side of the argument, and James Stanhope and Lord Sunderland on the other. One of the dominating issues of the rifts was foreign policy, especially in regards to the belief that the King was conducting foreign affairs in the interest of his German territories as opposed to Great Britain. The King himself gave his support to the Stanhope-Sutherland faction, and in 1719 they had Lord Townshend removed from his posts. The next day, Walpole resigned from the Cabinet in protest and joined the Opposition. www.lancmag.com
