the first prime minister --6/2/2026

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Today's selection-- from The Great Man by Edward Pearce. Robert Walpole became the first member of Parliament to be regarded as “Prime Minister” (or “First Minister”). He began to emerge as a young Parliamentarian during the reign of Queen Anne, when the “Duumvirs” (Latin for "two men"), in the form of Sydney Godolphin and John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, governed England:

“From the start, Walpole was assembling a circle which he would later dominate. Like the Tory leader Robert Harley, with whom he had otherwise only talent in common, Walpole had a gift for friendship. James Brydges, Paymaster General (1705-13) and later Duke of Chandos, described his as ‘the most friendly nature I have known’. Good humour joined with leadership qualities acquired a following, and Walpole could soon count on circles beyond the family group of Walpoles and the Townshend connection, a local nucleus which, before long, included his brother and lifelong lieutenant, Horatio Walpole, as well as William Feilding, Ash Windham of Felbrigg and Thomas De Grey, a Windham cousin, at Thetford and the two Whig candidates for Norwich, Waller Bacon and John Chambers. They would suffer the chicanery of the Tory Mayor, William Bythe, who voided their election being non-freemen for a freeman borough.

“These were all Norfolk men, but the group was not limited by the Fens. Walpole had no compunction about doing favours upwards. The Devonshires almost defined the term 'Grandee', but it was at Castle Rising that William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, heir to the Duchy and ardent Whig, was found a seat under Walpole's immediate patronage in 1701. In James Stanhope he found a man of equivalent talent to Spencer Compton, the lifetime occupant of his shadow. Then there were Sir John Holland, General Earle, Richard Temple of Stowe, Sir John Cropley down in Dorset and Jack Smith who would soon occupy the Speaker's chair. As early as 1708, Marlborough would be acknowledging 'the personal friends of Mr Walpole'. …

Portrait by Jean-Baptiste van Loo, c. 1740

“Government would lie in the early years of Anne with what were called the Duumvirs (co-rulers). Sydney Godolphin, a fussing, ubiquitous financial specialist, was a man around since Charles II, who had observed, 'Ah Mr Godolphin, never in the way, never out of the way.' He was partnered by the great Achilles, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. The General was about to enjoy enormous Continental military glory in a sequence of battles won over the French which 'every schoolboy' of legend could once recite: Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and, more problematically, Malplaquet, actually a bloody draw. Neither man had strong inherent political colours, though Marlborough's ferocious wife, Sarah, would become a sort of Whig Boadicea. They were there because there was a war to be fought, an administrator working with a soldier who either corresponded or commuted. Otherwise the Ministry was mixed. But with military victory, the Whigs, as supporters of the war, advanced. By April 1704, the year of Blenheim, most of the High Tories, Rochester, Nottingham, Jersey and Sir Edward Seymour, were gone, replaced by the moderate Harley and the very young Henry St John, the beginning of a ten-year alliance working its way to misalliance.”

author:	Edward Pearce
title:	The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's First Prime Minister
publisher:	Random House UK
pages:	31-35