Britain's first prime minister had earlier served six months in the Tower of London
In 1712 Robert Walpole was impeached for corruption, jailed in the Tower of London and thrown out of Parliament, even though he had kept none of the money in question. Nine years later he began more than two decades at the head of government, and he is still Britain's longest-serving prime minister.
Walpole was born in 1676 at Houghton, Norfolk, one of 19 children of a gentry family and a Whig politician. He was a King's Scholar at Eton and went on to King's College, Cambridge, planning a career in the Church. When his last surviving older brother died in 1698 he left Cambridge to help run the family estate of ten manors, which he inherited in 1700. He won his father's old seat of Castle Rising in 1701 and then sat for King's Lynn for the rest of his career. Voters called him Robin.
He rose fast, becoming Secretary at War in 1708, but the Tory victory of 1710 put him in opposition. He refused the new government's bribes and threats to change sides, and in 1712 was convicted over two forage contracts for Scotland. Whig leaders visited him in the Tower as a political martyr, and he wrote anonymous pamphlets against the ministry before returning to Parliament in 1713.
The accession of George I in 1714, who distrusted the Tories, began fifty years of Whig power. Walpole became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer and introduced a sinking fund to reduce the national debt. After the South Sea Bubble crash he returned as Chancellor, and critics accused him of shielding political allies. From 1721 to 1742 he dominated government, a period nicknamed the Robinocracy.
His approach favoured peace, low taxes, growing exports and a little more tolerance for Protestant Dissenters, and his middle course drew moderates from both parties. Historians credit him with safeguarding the Hanoverian succession and showing later ministers how to work between Crown and Commons. A keen huntsman, he built a lodge in Richmond Park. He died in 1745 as Earl of Orford.
Source: Robert Walpole
