Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

1.1 - Robert Walpole (Part 1)

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1.1 - Robert Walpole (Part 1)

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Robert Walpole, part 1.

Parliament: Hip hip! Hurrah! Hip hip! Hurrah! Hip hip! Hurrah!

1.1 – Robert Walpole (Part 1)

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I am here with my dad. We are reviewing all of the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Rishi Sunak. This is episode 1, Robert Walpole.

Joe: Actually, it's Robert Walpole Part 1. Normally we don't plan to do this as multi-part episodes, but Walpole being the first is such an important figure and has so much written about him. We also have a lot of ground to cover as he is the longest serving Prime Minister.

Abram: But that's not gonna really come into effect part 2.

Joe: Well, we're not going to make it all the way to when he's a prime minister today. We'll stop right as he's becoming prime minister.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: Are you excited?

Abram: Yep.

Joe: Well, I'm glad. I want to thank again our inspirations, Totalus Rankium and Rex Factor. We love your podcast, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Besides, some parents build treehouses with their kids, but I'm doing a podcast instead. I'm not really good with a hammer. It's really kind of the same thing, except one of them involves more ladders. And I'll let you figure out which. If you missed our episode 0, we've already talked about the history of Parliament and we only made a few embarrassing errors. So point those out if you like. Otherwise, we'll keep going.

Abram: I like that there are two British guys talking about US politics or two Americans talking about British politics.

Joe: If two Americans are talking about British politics, do you think we know more or less than two British people talking about American politics?

Abram: Definitely less. Because they're historians. We just decide to do this because we like prime ministers. They like presidents, I guess, and Roman emperors. We should definitely say Totalus Rankium likes Roman emperors. Their name's even based off of that.

Part 1 – Nepotism

Joe: We are going to start before the beginning, so we're not going to start with Robert Walpole. We are going to start with his grandfather, and his grandfather was named Edward Walpole, and he was born in 1610.

Abram: 21.

Joe: Now they were already part of a prominent family in Norfolk. Do you know where that is?

Abram: Yeah, it's sort of on that weird bump on England's coast.

Joe: The weird bump on England's coast. Well, I have a map here which I can show you, and it is indeed in the weird bump on England's coast. Have we now offended all of our British listeners already? I'm not entirely sure.

Abram: Maybe. Hopefully not.

Joe: The Walpole family at that point was already pretty prominent, but Edward gained a bit more standing when he married a woman named Susan Barkham. Susan happened to be the daughter of a prominent London businessman who had previously been the Lord Mayor of London in 1621. This was a great match. They were rich. Walpole wanted to be rich. It all worked out for them.

Joe: And that he was even able to ride this status to become a member of Parliament. He was elected for King's Lynn, which is in Norfolk. In the Convention Parliament of 1660 and the Cavalier Parliament of 1661. I don't know if you remember, but the Convention Parliament, that was the one right after the Long Parliament. So we're talking about the one that re-established Charles II and the monarchy.

Joe: So Edward Walpole's son was Robert Walpole, but not the Robert Walpole that you're thinking of. We're gonna call him Colonel Walpole. Colonel Walpole was probably in the military, but I wasn't able to find any records one way or the other of whether he was in the military or what he served. It could have just been an honorary title, but he was definitely locally prominent. He was even the deputy lieutenant for Norfolk County. That's kind of like the vice president of an English county, and that sounds pretty important. I have no idea how important it is.

Abram: Except it doesn't, because vice presidents don't do anything in the U.S.

Joe: That's true, but we—

Abram: They probably don't do that much here.

Joe: Especially for a county, but it made him sound important. This Colonel Walpole, Robert, had 19 kids, but only 9 survived to adulthood. And our Robert Walpole is the 5th kid. He was also a member of Parliament. He was elected as a Whig politician for Castle Rising in Norfolk and remained an MP up until he died.

Joe: So right now, Robert Walpole, the future Prime Minister, had a great-grandfather that was the Lord Mayor of London, a grandfather who was an MP from King's Lynn. His father was an MP from Castle Rising, and he was already in a pretty prominent and politically active family, even from this very early time.

Part 2 – Early Life

Joe: Robert Walpole was born August 26th, 1676. As we've already said, his family was well connected, but they weren't that wealthy. He was not what you would call an aristocrat. Colonel Walpole was more of an intellectual. He liked to collect books. He was active in local politics. Even though he wasn't that rich, he was still able to buy up land and increase his territory, increase his holdings.

Joe: In 1689, when Robert was just 13, his father was elected as one of those MPs from Castle Rising, but it's not exactly a democracy. How it worked there is that Castle Rising was what they called a burgage borough. Winner of an election there is going to be decided only by a small group of landholders that have certain parcels of really special land. Colonel Walpole had been buying up those parcels of land to ensure that he would be able to have enough of those to be elected. This wasn't unusual for the time, but it's not exactly how we would consider democracy.

Joe: Robert Walpole was taught first at a private school in Norfolk, and then he entered Eton College in 1690. Many famous people went to this school. Like it's basically a school for rich, famous people who weren't famous yet, I assume, who weren't famous yet, but they would become famous, right? You'd make connections, you know, you'd hire your friends. It even happens today. It's just not a good thing.

Joe: He then went to King's College in Cambridge in 1696, not our Cambridge, but the other Cambridge, the also important Cambridge.

Abram: If you want to know the Cambridge we're talking about, it's the one with Harvard. You probably don't know Harvard isn't in Boston.

Joe: I think most people know Harvard, but I think you're right. They probably think it's in Boston, but Cambridge is—

Abram: It's in Cambridge, trust us.

Joe: Robert Walpole had planned to enter the clergy, right? So he was not the first son, you know, at the time, you know, he wasn't going to inherit the land. Maybe he can become a bishop, have a pretty easy life. Being a bishop in the Anglican Church. Unfortunately, when he was 22, both of his brothers had died, but this meant that he went from being a forgotten third kid that was just going to be a priest or a bishop or something to essentially becoming the Walpole that would inherit the family estates. He had to drop out of school when he was 22, and he had to return home to help his dad run the estates and learn how to count all of his money.

Joe: Now, one funny story from this time period, Walpole's dad, the Colonel Walpole, he liked to drink alcohol, but he didn't want his son to see him drinking alcohol. So do you know what he did?

Abram: What?

Joe: He would get his son drunk so that his son would go and not be paying attention and be passed out somewhere. Then he would drink.

Abram: That reminds me of alcohol plus more alcohol equals no alcohol somehow. Do you remember that with Johnson and his speech?

Joe: His dad also arranged for the young Walpole to marry a woman named Catherine Shorter.

Abram: Was she shorter than him?

Joe: I couldn't find that out. I checked, but I can't figure out how tall she was. So he married Catherine. Her family was also wealthy. And guess what her father was? A previous mayor of London. He has a lot of Lord Mayor of Londons in his family, but the good news is that she was rich. She had a lot of money. He had some money, right? They were doing okay together. They got married on July 30th, 1700.

Joe: Unfortunately, Robert's father died only a few months later. When his father died, the younger Robert Walpole, the important Robert Walpole, he inherited the estate as well as all the property and the political influence. And he even inherited his father's seat because of course the seats in Parliament were granted based on land in Castle Rising. So that meant that Robert Walpole now could join Parliament.

Joe: Unfortunately, Robert's marriage to Catherine, it's going to have some ups and downs. Even the next year or two, they're going to start to have a little bit of challenge, but Robert Jr., his first son, is going to be born in 1701. And so they must have gotten along pretty well, at least at the beginning.

Joe: Well, when Robert Walpole went to Parliament the first time he gave a speech, it was apparently a very bad speech. Walpole's speech was so bad, one of the other MPs, they don't name him, so that means that probably isn't even real. One of the other MPs remarked, quote, "You may applaud the one and ridicule the other as much as you please. But depend on it, the spruce gentleman who made that speech," a speech that was good, "will never improve. But Walpole," who had just made a speech that was bad, "will in time become an excellent speaker." Apparently it was obvious even in the beginning that he would eventually become a good orator.

Abram: I don't think that's true.

Joe: I don't think that's true. This is coming out of a biography of Robert Walpole that was written in the late 1800s. And quite frankly, the biography really acts like he walked on water and I'm reasonably sure he didn't walk on water.

Abram: Yeah. And that was one of our biographies, but it's biased.

Joe: You know, some of the sources that we get when we study history are biased. It's part of our responsibility to detect that bias and understand what's really going on. This early period in Robert Walpole's life was marked by money trouble.

Abram: Money.

Joe: Colonel Walpole.

Abram: The one who died.

Joe: The one who died. He liked to spend money and he had actually spent a lot of money in order to buy up the land so that he could become an MP in Castle Rising. The younger Walpole also liked to spend money. All of the money that his wife brought in as part of like the dowry, they spent it on the wedding. As soon as his father had died, he started remodeling his house as fast as money came in. Money came out. He was rapidly careening in debt. One of the sources that I read has surviving letters from people mailing Robert Walpole saying, where's my money? Why aren't you paying me? He was running out of money very, very quickly.

Abram: Then stop using money so much, Walpole.

Joe: The thing is, to be rich back then, you kind of had to act rich. So if you acted rich, then you were rich. But the problem was if you acted rich, more than you were rich, then you'd run out of money, which is what he did. He was forced to sell some of his land. He sold some of the properties in Norfolk that made up that Castle Rising seat. He no longer had enough land for him to be in Parliament. He essentially lost the seat in the next election. And do you know who he lost it to? Horatio Walpole, his evil Tory uncle.

Abram: Ugh, I hate you, my relative. You can never escape the curse if I hate you, my relative.

Joe: Yeah, that's probably true. Well, I really want Horatio Walpole to be like a recurring villain, the evil Tory uncle that is constantly—

Abram: But he really doesn't appear much, but he doesn't appear again.

Joe: It's just, he took his seat. He's gonna be in a parliament for a while as his evil Tory uncle. And that's the end of that. Robert Walpole's lost his seat in parliament. He retires to the country. The end.

Abram: Nope.

Part 3 – MP for King's Lynn

Joe: No, that's not what happened. Because while Robert was an MP for Castle Rising, he was scheming. He had made good friends with the Turner family, and the Turner family were another prominent family in Norfolk. You know, they were probably friends some way back.

Joe: Robert, while he was an MP, proved himself to be a great ally to Turner. In specific, he proved himself to be a great ally to the town of Lynn. He built a poorhouse there. He made sure to work on bills or to otherwise do stuff that benefited Lynn. And somehow when he, just as he had lost his seat in Castle Rising, thanks to the work of Turner, he was able to be elected for King's Lynn.

Joe: So the question is, was Walpole just lucky or did he plan this all out? Did he scheme? And the reason he was helping people in Lynn was because he knew that there was a seat opening up there and that he had the right connections to get elected. Because in Lynn, unlike in Castle Rising, that was actually a different type of election where the freemen could vote. You know, that still wasn't quite the same as democracy as we have it now, but there was a lot more voters there. He made those voters happy. He knew prominent people, you know, he got elected. That is where he's gonna be for the remainder of his time in Parliament. He will be the MP from King's Lynn.

Abram: MP, of course, meaning Member of Parliament. It should have an O, but no one cares about the small words.

Joe: No one cares about the small words. You're right.

Abram: Poor small words.

Joe: One of the things that I find interesting about prime ministers, right? When we think of presidents, right? A president is really outside the political system, but a prime minister is still an MP from somewhere.

Joe: Anyway, in the years that followed, Walpole continued to move as a master politician. He secured alliances, built friendships, became a more and more prominent Whig. So he was assigned to committees and he gradually took on additional responsibilities. He joined a social club. He joined something called the Kit-Cat Club in London, which has nothing to do with the candy bar, but apparently it's where all of the great British politicians would go and like have meals together and discuss their evil plots or whatever it is that politicians discuss.

Joe: He also was apparently having some success at home because very quickly he had children, Mary, Edward, Dorothy, and Catherine, and they were all born right after one another. One of the things that's going on in this time period is something called the War of the Spanish Succession. Have you ever heard of that war?

Abram: Technically, yes, because we talked about this episode before now. So yes.

Joe: Charles II of Spain had died. He didn't have any heirs in 1700. Before he died, he nominated Philip of Anjou to be his heir. He was a grandson of Louis XIV of France.

Abram: The Sun King.

Joe: Yeah, I think so. Unfortunately, what this would mean is if he became King of Spain, then essentially the Bourbons would have a lot of control over both France and Spain and lots of other stuff. So England and Great Britain were against this union because it would weaken them and deny them trade with some Spanish territories. They wanted Charles VI, or the future Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire, to get Spain instead since he was a Habsburg.

Joe: England was initially brought into this war because King William III had territory in the Netherlands that were under threat by France and that they could be taken over if France became too powerful.

Abram: And he's the husband of Mary, and if you remember, he's the Dutch prince, I think.

Joe: Duke of Orange, right?

Abram: Yep. And he's on his solo rule right now.

Joe: Yeah. At this point he was ruling by himself, but he's going to die soon. Anne is not going to have the same personal interests, but she wanted to maintain alliances with Protestant countries, so they were still interested.

Joe: Now, a lot of things happen. We're not going to go into this war in detail, but we're going to say two things. First, that the Whigs tended to be pro-war. They wanted to restrict Catholics and they wanted to sort of fight against their longtime enemy.

Abram: And that's what Walpole wanted, right? Because he's a Whig. Does that mean he has a wig? Probably.

Joe: You know, I don't know that those two things are connected, but a lot of people had wigs back then.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: In contrast, the Tories tended to be anti-war or less pro-war. They didn't want to see the country fighting. While the war was very popular in the beginning, over time, the war became much less popular among the people in England.

Joe: Walpole continuing to rise. He was a prominent politician. He became the Secretary at War in 1708. That's like his highest job yet. And he was responsible for the financial and organizational management of the war effort. It's not exactly like the Secretary of War. It's more of an administrative job. So it's not like the American version of it.

Joe: And then he was later promoted to Treasurer of the Navy, and that gave him access to more money and the ability to sort of grease some palms. Walpole was a great administrator, but he was not afraid of utilizing his influence and money to get something now and then. And his wife, who really liked fancy things and he was even able to use some of his connections to smuggle in alcohol and other contraband goods that he weren't supposed to be able to import. And he used it for himself and maybe he gave some of it to his friends.

Part 4 – The Trial of Dr. Henry Sacheverell

Joe: The thing is the war wasn't that popular. Now go to 1709. The war is still on. Walpole is the Secretary at War, but something happened in London. That is a preacher doctor. Called Dr. Henry Sacheverell, what they called a high church Anglican. He believed very much in the supremacy of the Anglican church. He didn't like all these other Protestants around.

Joe: He gave a couple of really important speeches and those speeches were written down and then they were distributed around London. But these speeches basically were not only anti-war, not only were they anti-Whig, they also were about the centrality of the divine right of kings.

Joe: So essentially what this doctor was saying is we didn't have any right as subjects to contest what was going on with the kings or to contest whatever a king would say. What he was kind of getting at wasn't just that the Whigs are currently wrong. Maybe William and Mary were wrong too. What right did we have as subjects of the king to kick out James?

Abram: Does this get into the Jacobite stuff?

Joe: This does get into the Jacobites. So essentially he was not saying that the Jacobites were right. He was being very careful in what he was saying and not saying, but he was strongly implying the country needs to follow its king as set down by God. And that maybe William and Mary weren't the rightful kings.

Joe: This message got around, a lot of people were listening, and Dr. Sacheverell, he was charged with a crime called seditious libel. That means that he wrote things that were against the government. They didn't have freedom of speech the same way back then. And he was indirectly speaking out against Queen Anne. We don't know whether he was a Jacobite or if he was just liked by Jacobites, but it's pretty clear that those were his ideas.

Joe: Walpole actually got to speak at his trial. So Walpole was one of the prosecutors. He was tried in the House of Lords. And he said, quote, "If the doctrines advanced by Dr. Sacheverell are not criminal in the highest degree, it will follow that the necessary means used to bring about the revolution were illegal, and consequently that the present establishment and Protestant succession founded on that revolution are void and of no effect."

Joe: In other words, if he's right, the only conclusion is that the Jacobites are right and Anne shouldn't be queen, and we all know that Anne, she should be queen. So he was convicted, but weirdly, he was given a very light sentence. He was prevented from preaching for 3 years. And the books that he wrote had to be burned, which—

Abram: How is that a light punishment? Because it didn't involve death.

Joe: He wasn't killed. He wasn't locked in the tower. He just— don't talk to anybody for a while and all of your books get to be burned. But the thing was, this was kind of like the trial of the century. There were a lot of people that were very sympathetic to Dr. Sacheverell, including in the House of Lords. Maybe people were sympathetic to the Jacobites, and this was a little bit scary. In the election of 1710, the Whigs lost their seats. The Tories were able to win the election of 1710 on the backs of this trial, on the backs of everything that had gone on, and they were in control of the government.

Joe: So you're right that we're not going to have a Tory prime minister for a while. We're going to talk about why that is, but as of right now, 1710, 1711, the Tories are in charge. If somebody else was writing the history books, the Tories might've been the first Prime Minister.

Part 4.5 – Tory Parliament

Joe: This whole period is called the Tory Revival. It was caused by the trial, but it was also caused by the fact that the war was very unpopular. The Whigs liked the war, the Tories didn't like the war. And because the war was unpopular, people voted for the party that didn't like the war.

Joe: The Tories had the House of Commons. One of their first acts was to try to set up a peace treaty. Now it's going to take them like 3 years to negotiate this treaty, but what they quickly realized is that they only control the House of Commons. They don't control the House of Lords. So how are they going to get this treaty out? How do you get in the House of Lords? Do you know?

Abram: Is it like by having land or something?

Joe: Well, by being a noble. So if you were a peer of the realm, if you're an Earl, or above, you can be in the House of Lords. So all they did is they said, hey, Queen Anne, why don't you appoint a whole bunch more Tory Lords? She did. They appointed a whole bunch more Tory Lords, and that now that balance of power in the House of Lords was now swung towards the Tories.

Joe: I'm going to introduce you to someone new. His name is Robert Harley. He's been in the background a lot. A long time ago, he was a Whig and then he became a Tory. He's been in Parliament since 1689, and he had even been the Speaker of the House. He was a very prominent Tory politician, and in a parallel universe, he might be considered the first Prime Minister.

Abram: But in this universe, it's Walpole. That's why we aren't doing an episode on him.

Joe: Let's talk about Harley. So in 1710, Harley was one of the Tories that became more prominent in this Tory revival, and that he would become one of the key people that would be negotiating this peace to end the war. So remember I was saying that Queen Anne was appointing a whole bunch more Tories into the House of Lords? Harley was one of them. Harley was made the Earl of Oxford and Mortimer.

Abram: So now we're gonna call him Oxford.

Joe: We can now start calling him Oxford. Now, this is a weird thing that happens in the British system that I don't fully understand. In the British system, once you become a noble and, you know, are in the peerage, you're often referred to with the name of your peerage instead of your own last name. And I'm going to get confused because as an American, I find that to be very weird. But, you know, this is a podcast about British history. So I'm going to do my best to follow what they do.

Joe: Harley was also made the Lord High Treasurer. So he was setting out to improve the finances as well as negotiating this treaty. Now, to help balance the books, he started something called the South Sea Company. He was a moderate. He did a good job of mediating between the hardline factions in his party. He was even known for playing nice with the Jacobite-leaning Tories.

Joe: His influence helped a good friend of his, Henry St. John, become Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. And he actually became the lead negotiator on this treaty, and he's going to be elevated to the peerage as well. And we're going to start calling him Bolingbroke. And I get a little confused here because Henry St. John is now Henry Bolingbroke.

Abram: But Henry IV was Henry Bolingbroke.

Joe: But he's not Henry IV. He's a completely different Henry.

Abram: He didn't depose kings and make them starve.

Joe: No, he didn't do that. Well, at least not yet.

Part 5 – Walpole in Jail

Joe: Well, all this is happening. The Tories are in charge. They want a little bit of revenge. And one of the things that they claimed was going on when the Whigs were in charge was that the Whigs were corrupt and that the Whigs—

Abram: Walpole was corrupt.

Joe: Well, Walpole certainly skimmed a little bit here and a little bit there. And the point is the Tories now in charge decided that they were going to investigate the people that had run the previous government. And one of the people that they investigated was Walpole because they thought that maybe he had been doing all those things, which we just mentioned.

Joe: He was convicted. He was sentenced to the Tower of London in 1712, and he only ended up serving 6 months. The thing about being a prisoner in the Tower of London, at least a highborn prisoner like this, is that he was living in pretty much luxury. He was still a prisoner. But he was allowed to hire his own staff, furnish the room.

Abram: It was basically not prison. Well, not prison how you think of it.

Joe: Jail isn't jail if you're wealthy, and he used that time to connect with his allies and write pamphlets and things like that. During this time, Harley actually was having his own problems. An assassin tried to kill him in 1712, and he was saved by Jonathan Swift.

Joe: So in 1713, there was another election and guess what? The Tories won an even larger majority. It was pretty clear at this point that the country really was taking an anti-war bent and that things like Walpole's trial was really liked by the people in England.

Joe: Walpole, out of the Tower in London at this point, was allowed to run again. By the way, he was kicked out of Parliament when he was convicted. I think that was obvious. He can't be in Parliament and the Tower of London at the same time. They kicked him out, but they didn't say he couldn't come back. So he ran for election again in 1713 and he was brought back.

Joe: This is the parliament that finalized something called the Treaty of Utrecht. And in this treaty, the War of the Spanish Succession was over. Britain got Gibraltar, Minorca, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia. They got the Hudson Bay territory back. They got St. Kitts and they got the right to sell things into Spanish territory. Including African slaves.

Joe: In the end, Philip of Anjou became Philip V of Spain. He got to keep the Spanish crown in exchange for renouncing his claim on the French crown. When all of this happened, there were parties, there were fireworks across London, but Queen Anne was not able to attend them because she was at this point getting very sick.

Part 5.5 – Charles Townshend

Joe: So that's Harley. You mean Oxford, but I'm going to interrupt again to introduce another new character. This is Charles Townshend. He was originally a Tory and then became a Whig. So it's kind of like—

Abram: How confusing—

Joe: The opposite. Yeah. People change parties. It's weird. A long time ago, he had married a woman named Elizabeth Pelham, and she had a few brothers, but two of them that you might have heard about, Henry Pelham and Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Abram: Let's put a pin on both of them for later. You could probably guess what positions they both had.

Joe: Yeah. Well, we'll get there, but bad news.

Abram: What?

Joe: Elizabeth Pelham died. Charles Townshend married again. He married Dorothy Walpole, Robert's younger sister. So now there was this political alliance between the Walpole family, the Townshend family, and the Pelham family. And this political alliance is gonna last for a very, very long time.

Part 6 – Hanoverian Succession

Joe: It's now 1714, and Anne is in very poor health. At this point, Oxford and Bolingbroke were now not in agreement. Oxford was a moderate. He believed in the Act of Settlement that was passed that would make George the king. But Bolingbroke, either officially or unofficially, loudly or quietly, Bolingbroke seems to have been a Jacobite, that he was working at this time to put his men into key positions in the government and key positions in the military. There was even some talk that maybe James Stuart could just claim to be Anglican for like an afternoon, take communion once, and that they would use that as a pretext for allowing him to succeed after Queen Anne died.

Joe: Oxford really didn't move against Bolingbroke. Really at the end, this whole thing just led into a complicated disaster. Queen Anne lost confidence in Oxford. She removed him as Lord High Treasurer, and suddenly Bolingbroke became the most powerful Tory in Parliament.

Joe: He might have been able to act. He might have been able to arrange for James Stuart to come back, but Anne died only 5 days later. He didn't have enough time to put in motion any conspiracies that he might have been thinking about.

Joe: Bolingbroke wrote, quote, "What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us. I have lost all by the death of the Queen." His plan was foiled. She died too fast. And George I ascended to the throne.

Abram: Starting to get very interesting.

Part 7 – George I

Joe: George, he didn't arrive in England until September. But if the Tories in Parliament were worried about how they would be received by the new king. They were right. George saw the treaty that Oxford and Bolingbroke had negotiated in the War of Spanish Succession as a capitulation against his own dynasty. He immediately snubbed the two of them. He appointed a different person, Charles Montague, as First Lord of the Treasury.

Joe: He was starting to build up his own counselors, whether it was because Robert Walpole had spent his time in the Tower of London or it's just because of his own political skills and ambition, he was suddenly at the top of his game again. George actually appointed Walpole pretty much immediately as Paymaster General. So this is another financial role where Walpole can find ways to import stuff, I guess, or whatever.

Abram: Be corrupt.

Joe: I have read that in his time as Paymaster General, he was able to corruptly claim what today would be about a million dollars in revenue.

Abram: Of course, that's corruptly, which means, right.

Joe: Yeah. I think historians differ as to how corrupt he actually was. Now, Charles Townshend, remember him? That's Walpole's brother-in-law. He was made Secretary of State for the Northern Department. And in the UK system at that time, they had two Secretaries of State. So there was a northern one and the southern one. And that he was just responsible for the North.

Joe: George initially wanted to do a mix, a Tory government and a Whig government kind of put together, but the Tory ministers that he appointed for his Privy Council or for his cabinet positions, they all turned him down.

Joe: So with a new king, they also had a new election and in the election of 1715, the Whigs were able to claim the majority once again in the Commons. Now, this weird guy by the name of Spencer Compton, he actually is elected and he's going to be Speaker of the House.

Abram: Let's put a pin on him.

Joe: Yeah, definitely. Let's put a pin on him. I think he's going places.

Abram: By that, I mean he's going on vacation.

Joe: Maybe, maybe. We'll talk about his vacation soon. This election wasn't entirely fair. I don't think any of the elections that we've seen have been entirely fair, but there was some potential vote rigging. Supposedly some winning Tory candidates were disqualified and denied their seats in order to make sure that the Whigs maintain a majority. I don't know how many, I don't know if that was enough, but certainly there seems to have been a little bit of this chicanery going on.

Joe: Ongoing tensions with the Jacobites caused Parliament to look closely at the Jacobites that had been Queen Anne's government. Walpole himself got to lead a secret committee to investigate the actions of the previous administration.

Joe: Bolingbroke, realizing that he was probably gonna be arrested, snuck out of the country and went to France. This is not gonna be the last time we hear of him, but he's going to be hiding in France for a little while. Oxford was arrested, put on trial, and locked in the Tower of London for 2 years. I hope he got to hire his own servants and make his own food, 'cause he was pretty rich, right?

Abram: Yeah. How come Bolingbroke escaped but he didn't?

Joe: Bolingbroke went to a play at a theater in London, was sitting watching the play. In the middle of the play, he gets out of his seat. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom. He goes, changes his clothes, dresses as like a common worker, and sneaks out in the middle of the play. He doesn't even get to watch the end of the play. He sneaks out and manages to get a carriage. That takes him to a boat and the boat takes him to France and he successfully escapes from being put on trial by Robert Walpole.

Abram: Yeah, but how come Oxford didn't?

Joe: I don't know. Maybe he's not as smart. Maybe Bolingbroke got a warning. We don't know. These Jacobite tensions we were talking about, they were real. And in 1715, there was a Jacobite uprising. Some reason they call it the Fifteen. That is almost as dumb as the War of 1812 in terms of naming.

Abram: Well, probably even dumber.

Joe: Maybe dumber. I mean, it's literally just the Fifteen.

Abram: That could be 1915, it could be 1850, could be a Roman war and just 15 or 115. At least 1812, you know it's 1812.

Joe: Still, it was called the Fifteen and there was a rebellion in Scotland, parts of England. But let's just say a couple of things. First, they managed to pretty much capture Scotland. They had gotten so far along that so-called James III even went to Scotland to help lead the troops up there, but he was too late and actually he only left a month later.

Joe: In the end, 7 members of the House of Lords, 1 MP from the House of Commons were found to have participated amongst many other less important people. And Walpole pushed hard for trials. I think at this point, like he remembered, like he was put on trial, he was put in the Tower. He just got Oxford in the Tower. So Walpole pushed for trials.

Joe: A lot of those lords were convicted. King George really didn't want to execute them all. Some of them were given clemency. Some were executed. One escaped out a window, I think. The point is there was a real threat. George coming to the throne really revealed just how powerful the Jacobites still could potentially be in England. And they're going to come back again.

Part 8 – First Lord of the Treasury (First Time)

Joe: During this 1715 uprising, one important thing happened, and that is that Robert Walpole was promoted to become the First Lord of the Treasury. Now, this is the position that Harley had, amongst others. You mean Oxford, but this will be the position that eventually becomes equated with Prime Minister.

Joe: Some people think that maybe Walpole was first prime minister in 1715, but we're not going to say that. We're going to say he was first prime minister in 1721, because he's not going to hold on to it.

Joe: The Whigs were now completely in control of government. They were very afraid of the Tories. What do you do when you're afraid of your political opponent? What? You try not to have elections. So the Whigs passed a law called the Septennial Act in 1716, and this act meant that they didn't need to have as many elections. Instead of electing a new parliament every 3 years, they would now elect a new parliament every 7 years. This would mean that the Whigs had power locked in for longer, and then would make sure that the Tories would struggle even more to reclaim their position in the Commons.

Joe: But there's one of the crazy things, you know, a little bit about the French Revolution, right?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Well, one of the things about the French Revolution is that no winners ever hold themselves together very long. And the Whigs, now completely dominant in Parliament in Great Britain, they started fighting amongst themselves.

Part 8.5 – Whig Split

Joe: And then very quickly, there became two factions in Parliament, the Walpole-Townshend faction and a new faction, which is going to be led by people called Stanhope and Sunderland.

Abram: So this definitely reminds me of the Halfbreeds and the Stalwarts a bit. Are they gonna be like that at all?

Joe: I don't think they're gonna be around quite as long as the Halfbreeds and the Stalwarts. James Stanhope, he was now the Secretary of State for the Northern Department. You'll remember that Townshend was the Secretary of State for the Southern Department. Generally, the Northern one was considered more important.

Joe: Sunderland was actually the title name. For somebody called Charles Spencer, the Earl of Sunderland. And you might have heard of Spencers. They're still a pretty prominent family in England. Princess Diana was Diana Spencer before marrying Charles.

Abram: Yeah, this episode's filled with people named Charles.

Joe: This episode has so many people named Charles. Many people named Charles. What was causing this tension between the two factions? Well, it was George I. George wasn't just King of England. His foreign policy in Hanover was starting to affect England. George wanted alliances that would help him boost his possessions there while Walpole and Townshend wanted to have a more British-centric foreign policy, right? They didn't want their king to be making England do things that would benefit this other German territory.

Joe: So at any event, at this point, Spain was still angry at losing territory in the War of Spanish Succession. And that the major powers are starting to line up on sides again. George I wanted to ally with Austria, France, and the Netherlands. In the last war, France was one of the bad guys. And now George is like, hey, we should be friends with France.

Joe: Townshend and Walpole did not want an alliance with France, but Sunderland and Stanhope both were interested in this alliance with France, or at least interested in making George happy. And so the two sides almost came to blows. And what ended up happening was that Townshend was fired. So he was fired as Secretary of State. He wasn't doing what King George wanted. And if he wasn't going to do— Walpole said, you fired my friend. I quit. Well, he didn't quit Parliament, but he quit the Whig government.

Joe: So in 1717, Townshend and Walpole both officially left their Whig government to form a temporary almost party. We call this the Whig Split. I don't know if they had a different name, but many of Walpole and Townshend's allies came and joined with them, and that they now started to deliberately make it hard for Sunderland and Stanhope to pass bills.

Joe: They started voting with the Tories. Even though Walpole was a Whig, suddenly he and his faction were voting against bills that they would otherwise support, bills that they should like, they were voting against just because they were trying to make it as hard as possible for them to be able to do any work, to pass any bills.

Joe: So at this point, Stanhope effectively controls the government. George I went on a long trip to Hanover. If you're keeping track, this is another point where they're like, well, maybe Stanhope was the first prime minister. Well, we don't consider that.

Joe: The other thing is while this was going on, Walpole started buddying up with who, who is it that doesn't like George I the most? George II, the future George II, George, the Prince of Wales really did not get along with his dad. But one of the things that is true about the Hanoverians is that the fathers and the sons pretty much never get along. So at this point, George II didn't like his dad. His dad liked Sunderland and Stanhope. So George II is going to go pal around with Walpole.

Abram: George II, is he too busy in Hanover though?

Joe: George I is too busy in Hanover. George II is not busy in Hanover.

Abram: So this is— all of the Georges, I think, are from Hanover.

Joe: Yep. This was all against the backdrop of yet another war. There was something called the War of the Quadruple Alliance. Spain fought to reclaim their lost territory. Walpole, despite being against that alliance, England or Britain went into the war on the side of France and Austria. We're not going to talk about the war except it actually went better than expected. The last time they had a war, everyone hated it. The Tories were able to gain control, but this time people didn't seem to hate the war as much. I don't know why it's a foreign intervention, but politics are fickle things and I don't really get it.

Joe: The one thing that did come out of this, and this is something we're going to put a pin on this, is that Walpole became good friends with Caroline of Ansbach, who happens to be the future George II's wife.

Joe: By 1720, the war was successful, surprisingly popular. Walpole's whole grandstanding and dividing the Whig Party wasn't really accomplishing anything, and he pretty much just gave up. He pretty much said, okay, fine. I'm going to go back into the government. I'm going to join back up with you. But he had really good timing.

Part 9 – South Sea Company

Joe: Do you remember that South Sea Company, the Tories that started back in 1711? That was still running in 1720, but it had a pretty big problem. The problem with the South Sea Company is that they weren't making that much money. The trade with Spain wasn't very good. They had started even trading slaves. Slavery was still legal.

Joe: And yet this company was still well considered enough by the British government that they did some really complicated things involving using this company in order to write down some of the national debt from all these wars that Britain had been fighting based on this company. This would work very well as long as the company was successful. And in fact, the company for a while seemed very, very successful. People would buy the shares of stock, the stock prices would go up, and everyone that was involved in this was very, very happy. But let me show you something. Here's a picture.

Joe: What is this, Abram?

Abram: A graph.

Joe: Do you know how to read a graph like this?

Abram: So it looks like it was very high in the middle of 1720 with like almost 1,000 somethings.

Joe: 1,000 pounds, I assume. Yeah. The graph starts over here in 1719, and it's a little bit above 100. A lot of people had bought stock right here where it was a little bit above 100. Because more and more people kept buying the stock, the stock price went up. It went up almost to 1,000. The problem is the company wasn't making any money. There was no reason for the stock price to go up like this. It was all, it was all a confidence trick in a way. Even prominent people like King George himself, like Sir Isaac Newton invested here.

Abram: Yeah. Yes. He was still alive at this point. He was still alive. Even though he's famous for being in the 1660s, he lived long and he was in his 20s at that point. Well, he wasn't in his 20s now. Yes. Now he's like in his 70s, but he's lucky that he lived long.

Joe: Now, something really lucky happened. See up here near where it said 1,000? This is Robert Walpole for reasons that I'm not entirely sure. Good luck. Maybe he knew something was going on. He decided to sell his shares right there when it was close to 1,000. Why? He made a lot of money. A lot, a lot, a lot of money. And this, I'm showing another picture, is what he built with his money. What is that?

Abram: This is the house that he built on his ancestral land back in Norfolk. And in fact, you can go there and take a tour. People still live there, unfortunately, so you can't tour the whole thing, but you can go and take a tour.

Joe: This is Walpole's house that he built based on the money that he just made by selling a whole bunch of stocks and probably also all that corruption that he was involved in earlier.

Abram: Yeah, I think we're forgetting to mention the corruption a bit.

Joe: I don't know. It's hard to overstate, but the thing is the confidence in this company dropped. The stock price fell. Thousands and thousands of rich people in England suddenly became poor. Like they would've invested massive amounts of money into these stocks. And when that line goes down, if you bought at 1,000 and you sell at 100 again, you've now lost 90% of your money.

Joe: This crashed. Not only did it crash for the investors, this is also how England was trying to write off some of its debt. There was a very real financial crisis. Quickly, they looked for people to blame. And who was in charge? Stanhope and Sunderland. Sunderland was forced to resign. Stanhope died before he could resign.

Joe: Suddenly Walpole, who hadn't even been a good Whig and had just returned to the government like a couple of months ago after his whole protest, suddenly everyone had resigned. He was in charge. He would be the one that would have to fix the British economy after this terrible crash.

Joe: He was appointed First Lord of the Treasury. He was appointed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is another important financial role. And he was made the leader of the House of Commons. This moment when Walpole out of nowhere secures 3 major positions as well as the ear of the king and told, please fix this, please. This is the moment where most people think that Walpole became the first prime minister.

Joe: I'm going to leave it there for today. Abram, how you liking this guy so far?

Abram: What I think about him is that like our silver screen score, that's the one I'm thinking about right now. He'll not get a lot of points in that because his stuff is that interesting, but because, like, he was the first one, so he sort of has to have an interesting thing.

Joe: Yeah, well, I think he's interesting.

Abram: Becoming the first prime minister will give him a lot of points for the accomplished score. I really don't know how to judge him yet, as most of the judgment usually comes in in the part 2.

Joe: Yeah, well, we don't need to judge him now. Well, Abram, I've had a great time talking to you about Walpole tonight. I look forward to finishing up his time as Prime Minister with you and get to the rating next time.

Abram: And we'll see you next time, right?

Joe: We'll see you next time.

Abram: Goodbye.

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