Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, who had resigned as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Excheque to join his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, in the Parliamentary Opposition, has often congregated with like minded politicos at Leicester House, the home of the Prince of Wales, to form political plans.

Walpole and Townshend believe that George I has been conducting foreign affairs with the interests of his German territories—rather than those of Great Britain—at heart.

The Cabinet’s Stanhope-Sunderland faction, however, has the King's support.

Walpole has continued to be an influential figure in the House of Commons; he had been especially active in opposing one of the Government's more significant proposals, the Peerage Bill, which would have limited the power of the monarch to create new peerages.

Walpole had brought about a temporary abandonment of the bill in 1719, and the outright rejection of the bill by the House of Commons in the next year.

Walpole has also became a close friend of the Prince of Wales's wife, Caroline.

He improves his position in 1720 by bringing about a reconciliation between the Prince of Wales and the King.

A partial reconciliation, the result of the bill’s defeat, takes place early in 1720 between the parties of Stanhope and Townshend, and in June of this year the latter becomes Lord President of the Council; Walpole returns to the Cabinet as Paymaster of the Forces.

By returning to the Cabinet, however, he loses the favor of the Prince of Wales (the future King George II), who still harbors disdain for his father's Government.

Soon after Walpole’s return to the Cabinet, England is swept by a wave of over-enthusiastic speculation which leads to the South Sea Bubble.

The Government has established a plan whereby the South Sea Company would assume the national debt of Great Britain in exchange for lucrative bonds; it is widely believed that the Company will eventually reap an enormous profit.

Many in the country, including Walpole himself, invest in the company.

The company by the latter part of 1720 has begun to collapse, however, as the price of its shares plunges.

Walpole is saved from financial ruin by his banker, who had earlier advised him to sell his shares; other investors, however, are not as fortunate.

Parliament’s investigation, reporting in 1721, reveals widespread fraud among the directors of the South Sea Company.

Among those implicated are John Aislabie (the Chancellor of the Exchequer), James Craggs the Elder (the Postmaster General), James Craggs the Younger (the Southern Secretary), and even Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland (the heads of the Ministry).

Craggs the Elder and Craggs the Younger will both die in disgrace; the remainder are impeached for their corruption.

Aislabie is found guilty and imprisoned, but the personal influence of Walpole saves both Stanhope and Sunderland.

For his role in preventing these individuals, and others, from being punished, Walpole gains the nickname of "Screenmaster-General".

The resignation of Sunderland and the death of Stanhope in 1721 leaves Walpole as the most important figure in the administration.

He is n April 1721 appointed First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. (Walpole's de facto tenure as England’s first "Prime Minister" is often dated to his appointment as First Lord in 1721. In reality, however, Walpole shares power with Lord Townshend, who serves as Secretary of State for the Northern Department and controlled the nation's foreign affairs. The two also have to contend with the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, Lord Carteret.)

Walpole, who despite having invested had argued against the scheme from the beginning, is forced to introduce a series of measures to restore public confidence.

The estates of the directors of the company are confiscated and used to relieve the suffering of the victims, and the stock of the South Sea Company is divided between the Bank of England and East India Company.

The crisis has significantly damaged the credibility of the King and of the Whig Party, but Walpole defends both with skillful oratory in the House of Commons.

Walpole's first year as “Prime Minister” is also marked by the discovery of a Jacobite plot formed by Francis Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, to capture the royal family and proclaim as king James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of King James II of England and VII of Scotland and his Roman Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena.

The exposure of the scheme crushes the hopes of the Jacobites, whose previous attempts at rebellion (most notably the risings of 1715 and 1719) had failed to meet with success.

The primary trading business of the South Sea Company is buying enslaved West Africans, transporting them to the Americas, and then reselling them into slavery, with an annual quota, set by the Asiento, of forty-eight hundred.

Despite its problems with speculation, the South Sea Company is relatively successful in this task (it had been unusual for other, similarly chartered companies to fulfill their quotas. According to records compiled by David Eltis, et al, during the course of ninety-six voyages in twenty-five years, thirty-four thousand enslaved people were transported across the Atlantic, of whom thirty thousand survived the voyages. This fifteen percent mortality rate, which is usual, indicates that the organization was a strongly interested and relatively competent slave trader.)

Employees, directors and investors have overcome major obstacles in order to pursue the slave trade, including two wars with Spain and the 1720 bubble.

Indeed, the company's most successful slave trading year is in 1725, five years after the bubble had burst.

The Patriot Whigs forms in this year in the House of Commons in opposition to Walpole’s ministry, when William Pulteney and seventeen other Whigs join with the Tory party.

The Whig Patriots believe that Walpole has grown too powerful, that he is too partisan, too exclusive, and too personally important.

Further, they suspect that Walpole is enriching himself from the public purse.

Discontent with Walpole among his fellow Whigs had first been brought to a crisis with the South Sea Bubble and his role as a "screen" to the South Sea directors (and his amazing ability to profit in a stock that crashed).

The Tories had accused Walpole of misappropriations going back to his time in the Navy, and even radical Whigs such as John Tutchin had publicly accused him of siphoning off money.

Townshend's major diplomatic achievement is the formation in 1725 of the League of Hanover, which brings Britain, France, and Prussia into an alliance against Austria and Spain.

Spain and Britain, recently at war with each other during the War of the Quadruple Alliance, come into conflict during the 1720s over a number of issues.

Disputes over trade are a major cause of aggravation to Anglo-Spanish relations, combined with a fear in Britain that Spain has made an alliance with Austria as the precursor to declaring war on Britain and its ally France.

The British have decided to try to weaken Spain and discourage them from pursuing the Austrian alliance by denying the Spanish the treasure fleets on which metropolitan Spain has become dependent.

An expedition had been sent in March 1726 to the Spanish West Indies, under Rear-Admiral Francis Hosier, for the purpose of blocking up the Spanish galleons or seizing them should they venture out.

The former privateer and governor of the Bahamas, Woodes Rogers, who is in London at the time, is consulted by the Government as to the probable means and route the Spaniards will adopt to get their treasure home.

From past experience, Rogers probably knows more than any other person then in England of the difficulties of the voyage, and in conjunction with Capt. Jonathan Denniss, he delivers a report dated November 10, 1726 to Viscount Townshend, Secretary of State, to prepare Hosier for his task.

Hosier's fleet appears on June 16, 1726, off Bastimentos Island, to the west of Porto Bello.

Following orders, ultimately from Walpole, to blockade Porto Bello but not to take it, Hosier remains before it, allowing no ships to go in or come out without strict examination.

On first arrival of the squadron, several Spanish ships are captured.

The Hanover-born Prince of Wales, the last British monarch to have been born outside of Great Britain, succeeds to the British throne as George II at the death of King George on June 11, 1727, but a battle of wills continues with his son and heir-apparent, Prince Frederick.

The new King may have planned to exile his son to the British colonies, but, in any event, does not actually do so.

George is crowned at Westminster Abbey on October 4.

Handel, a leading composer of concerti grossi, operas and oratorios, has resided in London since 1712, and directed the Royal Academy of Music from 1720.

Handel had in 1723, moved into a newly built house in Brook Street, London, where he will rent until his death thirty-six years later. (The Handel House Museum is now a restored Georgian house open to the public with an events program of Baroque music.)

Handel also enjoys a long association with the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where many of his Italian operas are premiered.

Handel's opera Scipio (Scipione) had been performed for the first time in 1726, the march from which remains the regimental slow march of the British Grenadier Guards.

He is naturalized a British subject in the following year and is commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation ceremony of King George II. (One of these, Zadok the Priest, has been also played at every coronation ceremony since.)

It is widely believed both that George will dismiss Walpole, who had distressed him by joining his father's government, and that he will be replaced by Sir Spencer Compton; George requests Compton, rather than Walpole, to write his first speech for him.

Sir Spencer, however, requests Walpole for aid in the task, leading Queen Caroline, an ardent supporter of Sir Robert, to claim that Compton is incompetent.

George does not behave obstinately; instead, he agrees with his wife and retains Walpole as Prime Minister, who continues to slowly gain royal favor, securing a generous civil list of eight hundred thousand pounds for the King.

He also persuades many Tory politicians to accept the succession laid down in the Act of Settlement as valid.

In turn, the King helps Sir Robert to gain a strong parliamentary majority by creating peers sympathetic to the Whigs.

Hosier remains for six months until yellow fever makes such havoc among his seamen that he had been compelled to return to Jamaica, where he had recruited fresh crews.

Again at sea two months later, he continues to cruise in the Caribbean Sea in front of Cartagena, still losing men to the disease.

Furthermore, this absence from Porto Bello makes the blockade ineffective, and in January 1727, Antonio de Gaztañeta, commanding a Spanish treasure fleet with thirty-one million pesos on board, slips through the British blockade to reach Spain on March 8, 1727.

Between three thousand and four thousand British sailors have lost their lives in this venture.

Hosier himself, on August 23, 1727, also dies from the deadly effects of the climate and is replaced temporarily by Edward St. Lo.

St. Lo maintains the blockade and returns to Jamaica to resupply and refit the fleet when he determines that the Spanish fleet is not in a condition to leave port.

St. Lo is replaced in Jamaica in January 1728 by Edward Hopson, but regains command when Hopson succumbs to disease the following May.

Walpole's position is secure while the Queen lives.

He is the master of domestic policy, and he still exerts some control over George's foreign policy.

While the King is eager for war in Europe, the Prime Minister is more cautious.

Thus, in 1729, he encourages George to sign a peace treaty with Spain.

Nicholas Hawksmoor had became Surveyor of the Abbey when Christopher Wren died in 1723; he had also designed the west front of Westminster Abbey.

St. Lo continues to command the blockading fleet until April 1729, when he too dies of a tropical malady.

Preliminary peace terms have by this time been agreed between the two powers, and the fleet returns home.

The war comes to a formal end in November 1729 with the signing of the Treaty of Seville.

Great Britain, France, and Spain on November 9, 1729, sign the Treaty of Seville, concluding the Anglo-Spanish War.

Preliminary discussions had already taken place between Britain and Spain at the Convention of Pardo and the Congress of Soissons.

Most of the clauses signed at Seville had been agreed at those conferences.

William Stanhope and Sir Robert Walpole participates in the negotiations.

Stanhope, for his services in this matter, will be created Baron Harrington in January 1730.

Moreover, Walpole will reward Stanhope by making him the Secretary of State for the Northern Department.

Based on the terms of the treaty, Britain maintains control of Port Mahon and Gibraltar.

In return, Britain supports the claim of Isabella Farnese, Queen of Spain, to the Duchy of Parma, after the death of Antonio Farnese, Duke of Parma.

King Philip V of Spain and his wife Elisabeth Farnese, while in Seville to oversee the contract, have a child Maria Antonietta of Spain, who is born a week after the signing of the treaty.