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1742
Events January–March * January 9 – Robert Walpole is made Earl of Orford, and resigns as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, effectively ending his period as Prime Minister of Great Britain. On his formally relinquishing office five days later, he will have served 20 years and 314 days as Prime Minister, the longest single term ever, and also longer than the accumulated terms of any other British Prime Minister. * January 14 – Edmond Halley dies; James Bradley succeeds him as Astronomer Royal of Great Britain. * January 24 – Charles VII becomes Holy Roman Emperor. * January 28? – The House of Commons of Great Britain votes on the alleged rigging of the Chippenham by-election. It becomes a motion of no confidence, which leads to the resignation of Robert Walpole. * February 12 – John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret becomes Secretary of State for the Northern Department in Great Britain. * February 15— First Siles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745; known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole) was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Although the exact dates of Walpole's dominance, dubbed the "Robinocracy", are a matter of scholarly debate, the period 1721–1742 is often used. He dominated the Walpole–Townshend ministry, as well as the subsequent Walpole ministry, and holds the record as the longest-serving British prime minister. W. A. Speck wrote that Walpole's uninterrupted run of 20 years as prime minister "is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history. Explanations are usually offered in terms of his expert handling of the political system after 1720, ndhis unique blending of the surviving powers of the crown with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Of The Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession () was a European conflict that took place between 1740 and 1748. Fought primarily in Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, Italy, the Atlantic and Mediterranean, related conflicts included King George's War in North America, the War of Jenkins' Ear, the First Carnatic War and the First and Second Silesian Wars. Its pretext was the right of Maria Theresa to succeed her father Emperor Charles VI as ruler of the Habsburg monarchy. France, Prussia and Bavaria saw it as an opportunity to challenge Habsburg power, while Maria Theresa was backed by Britain, the Dutch Republic and Hanover, collectively known as the Pragmatic Allies. As the conflict widened, it drew in other participants, among them Spain, Sardinia, Saxony, Sweden and Russia. Prussia occupied Silesia in 1740 and repulsed Austrian efforts to regain it, although Austria and Sardinia defeated Spanish attempts to regain their territories in Northern Italy. By early 1748, Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Silesian War
The First Silesian War (german: Erster Schlesischer Krieg, links=no) was a war between Prussia and Austria that lasted from 1740 to 1742 and resulted in Prussia's seizing most of the region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland) from Austria. The war was fought mainly in Silesia, Moravia and Bohemia (the lands of the Bohemian Crown) and formed one theatre of the wider War of the Austrian Succession. It was the first of three Silesian Wars fought between Frederick the Great's Prussia and Maria Theresa's Austria in the mid-18th century, all three of which ended in Prussian control of Silesia. No particular triggering event started the war. Prussia cited its centuries-old dynastic claims on parts of Silesia as a ''casus belli'', but ''Realpolitik'' and geostrategic factors also played a role in provoking the conflict. Maria Theresa's contested succession to the Habsburg monarchy provided an opportunity for Prussia to strengthen itself relative to regional rivals such as Saxony and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VII (6 August 1697 – 20 January 1745) was the prince-elector of Bavaria from 1726 and Holy Roman Emperor from 24 January 1742 to his death. He was a member of the House of Wittelsbach, and his reign as Holy Roman Emperor thus marked the end of three centuries of uninterrupted Habsburg imperial rule although he was related to the Habsburgs by both blood and marriage. After the death of emperor Charles VI in 1740, he claimed the Archduchy of Austria by his marriage to Maria Amalia of Austria, the niece of Charles VI, and was briefly, from 1741 to 1743, as Charles III King of Bohemia. In 1742, he was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as Charles VII and ruled until his death three years later. Early life and career Charles (Albert) (german: Karl Albrecht) was born in Brussels and the son of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, and Theresa Kunegunda Sobieska, daughter of King John III Sobieski of Poland. His family was politically divided during the War of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spencer Compton, 1st Earl Of Wilmington
Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, (2 July 1743) was a British Whig statesman who served continuously in government from 1715 until his death. He sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1698 and 1728, and was then raised to the peerage and sat in the House of Lords. He served as the prime minister of Great Britain from 1742 until his death in 1743. He is considered to have been Britain's second prime minister, after Robert Walpole, but worked closely with the Secretary of State, Lord Carteret, in order to secure the support of the various factions making up the government. Early life Compton was the third son of the 3rd Earl of Northampton and his wife Mary Noel, daughter of Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden. He was educated at St Paul's and matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 28 February 1690, aged 15. Thereafter he was admitted into Middle Temple in 1687. Political career English House of Commons Although his family were High Tories, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Andrews
''The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams'', was the first full-length novel by the English author Henry Fielding to be published and among the early novels in the English language. Appearing in 1742 and defined by Fielding as a "comic epic poem in prose", it tells of a good-natured footman's adventures on the road home from London with his friend and mentor, the absent-minded parson Abraham Adams. Inspirations The novel embodies a fusion of two competing aesthetics of 18th-century literature: the mock-heroic and neoclassical (and, by extension, aristocratic) approach of Augustans such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, and the popular, domestic prose fiction of novelists such as Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. The novel draws on various inspirations. Written "in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, the author of ''Don Quixote''" (see title page on right), the work owes much of its humour to the techniques developed by Ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmond Halley
Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, Halley catalogued the southern celestial hemisphere and recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised that a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the distances between Earth, Venus, and the Sun. Upon his return to England, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and with the help of King Charles II, was granted a master's degree from Oxford. Halley encouraged and helped fund the publication of Isaac Newton's influential ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687). From observations Halley made in September 1682, he used Newton's laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 ''Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets''. It was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earl Of Orford
Earl of Orford is a title that has been created three times. The first creation came in the Peerage of England in 1697 when the naval commander Admiral of the Fleet Edward Russell was made Earl of Orford, in the County of Suffolk. He was created Baron of Shingay, in the County of Cambridge, and Viscount Barfleur at the same time, also in the Peerage of England. A member of the influential Russell family, he was the son of the Honourable Edward Russell, a younger son of Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford and younger brother of William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford (see Duke of Bedford for earlier history of the Russell family). Lord Orford had no children and the titles became extinct on his death in 1727. The title was created again in the Peerage of Great Britain in 1742 for Sir Robert Walpole, ''de facto'' acknowledged to have been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, who at the same time was created Viscount Walpole and Baron Walpole of Houghton. The titles beca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret
John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, 7th Seigneur of Sark, (; 22 April 16902 January 1763), commonly known by his earlier title Lord Carteret, was a British statesman and Lord President of the Council from 1751 to 1763; he worked extremely closely with the Prime Minister of the country, Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, in order to manage the various factions of the Government. He was Seigneur of Sark from 1715 to 1720 when he sold the fief. He held (in absentia) the office of Bailiff of Jersey from 1715 to 1763. Origins He was the son and heir of George Carteret, 1st Baron Carteret (1667–1695), by his wife Lady Grace Granville (c. 1677–1744), ''suo jure'' 1st Countess Granville, 3rd daughter of John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628–1701) of Stowe House in the parish of Kilkhampton in Cornwall. The progeny of this marriage, Barons Carteret, Earls Granville, and Marquesses of Bath (Thynne), were co-heirs to her childless nephew William Granville, 3rd Earl of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans ( la, Imperator Romanorum, german: Kaiser der Römer) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period ( la, Imperator Germanorum, german: Römisch-deutscher Kaiser, lit, Roman-German emperor), was the ruler and head of state of the Holy Roman Empire. The title was held in conjunction with the title of king of Italy (''Rex Italiae'') from the 8th to the 16th century, and, almost without interruption, with the title of king of Germany (''Rex Teutonicorum'', lit. "King of the Teutons") throughout the 12th to 18th centuries. The Holy Roman Emperor title provided the highest prestige among medieval Roman Catholic monarchs, because the empire was considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only successor of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Thus, in theory and diplomacy, the emperors were considered '' primus inter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secretary Of State For The Northern Department
The Secretary of State for the Northern Department was a position in the Cabinet of the government of Great Britain up to 1782, when the Northern Department became the Foreign Office. History Before the Act of Union, 1707, the Secretary of State's responsibilities were in relation to the English government, not the British. Even after the Union, there was still a separate Secretary of State for Scotland until 1746, though the post was sometimes vacant. This continued the previous Scottish government post of Secretary of State. Before 1782, the responsibilities of the two Secretaries of State for the Northern and the Southern Departments were not divided up in terms of area of authority, but rather geographically. The Secretary of State for the Northern Department was responsible for relations with the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland, Russia, and the Holy Roman Empire. The Secretary of State for the Southern Department was responsible for Ireland, the Channel Islands, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chancellor Of The Exchequer
The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of HM Treasury, His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is a high-ranking member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, British Cabinet. Responsible for all economic and financial matters, the role is equivalent to that of a finance minister in other countries. The chancellor is now always Second Lord of the Treasury as one of at least six Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, lords commissioners of the Treasury, responsible for executing the office of the Treasurer of the Exchequer the others are the prime minister and Commons government whips. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was common for the prime minister also to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer if he sat in the Commons; the last Chancellor who was simultaneously prime minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer was Stanle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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