Robert Walpole and the Nature of Politics in Early Eighteenth-century Britain

160 Pages·1990·15.089 MB·English

by  Jeremy Black (auth.)

ROBERT WALPOLE AND THE NATURE
OF POLITICS IN EARLY
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN
British History in Perspective
General Editor: Jeremy Black
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
John Davis British Politics 1885-1931
Ann Hughes Causes of the English Civil War
Keith Perry British Politics and the American Revolution
Michael Prestwich English Politics in the Thirteenth Century
ROBERT WALPOLE AND
THE NATURE OF POLITICS
IN EARLY EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY BRITAIN
JEREMY BLACK
Macmillan Education
©Jeremy Black 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1990
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. iOOiO
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04243-1
ISBN 978-0-333-45575-3 ISBN 978-1-349-21119-7 (eBook)
DOI1 0.1007/978-1-349-21119-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Black, Jeremy
Robert Walpole and politics in early eighteenth-century Britain
Jeremy Black.
p. cm.-(British history in perspectives)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-312-04243-1
I. Great Britain-Politics and government-I 760--1789. 2. Great
Britain-Politics and government-I 727-1 760. 3. Great Britain
-Social conditions-18th century. 4. Walpole, Robert, Earl of
Oxford, 1676--1745. 5. Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 1708--1778.
I. Title. II. Series.
DA480.B58 1990
941.07'3-dc20 89-70081
CIP
CONTENTS
Note on Dates
VI
Preface
Vll
Introduction 1
1 Walpole's Rise 4
2 Stability, Patronage and Parliament 23
3 The Crown and the Political Nation 56
4 Party and Politics under the First Two Georges 89
5 The British Dimension 106
Conclusion 120
References 123
A Note on Sources 139
Select Bibliography 141
Index 148
V
NOTE ON DATES
Unless otherwise stated all dates are given in old style, the British
calendar of the period. Most European countries conformed to
new style, which was eleven days ahead. New style dates are
marked (ns).
VI
PREFACE
There is not an evening, that there is not some paper cried about
the street, good or bad of Robert hatch, Robert hangman, Robert
the Coachman etc. or something of this kind, which shows what a
spirit he has to fend himself against.
(Dowager Countess of Portland, 1730')
The most puzzling aspect of Sir Robert Walpole's political life
is the extraordinary longevity of his ministry. Walpole was the
leading minister of the Crown from 1721 until 1742 without a
break. This contrasted with the periods before and after, which
were characterised by ministerial instability. The longevity of
Walpole's ministry is inextricably involved with the question of
the stability of Britain in this period, and this notion of stability
provides the key concept through which various aspects of Britain
in this period can be discussed. Walpole's ministry raises the
question whether a stability of ministerial personnel necessarily
denoted an underlying stability in the economy, popular politics,
religious feeling, constitutional concerns and national and
regional relationships.
My work has greatly benefited from the studies of other
scholars and from my own research. I am most grateful both for
the former and to those bodies that have funded the latter,
especially the British Academy. I would like to thank Stephen
Baskerville, Ian Christie, Eveline Cruickshanks, Grayson Ditch
field, Richard Harding, Philip Woodfine and an anonymous
reader for commenting on earlier versions and Linda Heitmann
Vll
Preface
and Janet Forster for wordprocessing three of them. This book is
dedicated to Jonathan Riley-Smith, my Director of Studies at
Cambridge, and to Reg Ward, Professor of Modern History in
my early years at Durham.
Newcastle, June 1989 J.B.
VIll
INTRODUCTION
Seventeenth-century background
To understand both Walpole and Britain in the first half of the
eighteenth century it is necessary to appreciate their seventeenth
century background. This was the period when the leading
politicians were born and grew up. Of the leading Whigs,
Stanhope was born in 1673, Townshend and Sunderland in
1674, Walpole in 1676, Argyll in 1678, Ilay in 1682, Pulteney
in 1684 and Newcastle in 1693. Of the leading Tories, Strafford
was born in 1672, Shippen in 1673, Bolingbroke in 1678 and
Wyndham in 1687. These were years of serious instability and
conflict. The main interrelated causes were religious, political
and dynastic. Religious conflict was central to the great events
of the seventeenth century. The English Civil War can best be
appreciated, especially if its Scottish and Irish dimensions are
included, as a war of religion. James II (1685-8) was ousted in
the so-called Glorious Revolution largely because of the suspicion
that he would try to enforce his own Catholicism on his subjects.
Religious differences and suspicions corroded the loyalty and
obedience to the sovereign that so much contemporary political
thought preached. Religion was not only a matter for politicians.
People who were in the wrong Church were deprived of a wide
variety of what would today be considered rights but were then
thought of as privileges, such as the right to vote or to be an
MP, to hold political and government office, to establish schools
1