Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman

This volume is devoted to the neglected part of his career-his rise to power from 1 700 to
1722 . Many of Walpole's attitudes both to institutions and to politics were formed in the years of bitter party strife which marked the reign of Queen Anne; others were confirmed by the grave instability to which the Hanoverian succesion gave rise. These formative years have been ignored by h1storians, including Coxe. Most biographers present him riding to power on the crest of public demand, as the one man who could save his country from rum after the disasters of the South Sea Bubble. How false that picture is this book, I hope, will show. Walpole became prime minister on the death of his great rival Sunderland in April 1722, not before, and in their titanic struggle for power, in which the South Sea crisis was but an incident, were forged those qualities of statesmanship which have given Robert Walpole an enduring place in English history.