Sir Edward Walpole KB PC (Ire) (1706 – 12 January 1784) was a British politician, and a younger son of Sir

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 Lea ...

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

from 1721 to 1742.

Early life

The second son of Sir Robert Walpole, he was educated at Eton (1718) and

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

(1725) and studied law at

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincol ...

(1723), where he was called to the bar in 1727. He undertook a

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tut ...

in Italy in 1730.

Political career

Walpole first entered

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

as Member for

Lostwithiel Lostwithiel (; kw, Lostwydhyel) is a civil parishes in England, civil parish and small town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom at the head of the estuary of the River Fowey. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,739, increas ...

in a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election ( Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to ...

on 29 April 1730, following the death of Sir Edward Knatchbull earlier that month. He was appointed junior Secretary to the Treasury the same year. On 2 May 1734, in the next general election, he succeeded his uncle Horatio Walpole as Member of Parliament for

Great Yarmouth Great Yarmouth (), often called Yarmouth, is a seaside town and unparished area in, and the main administrative centre of, the Borough of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England; it straddles the River Yare and is located east of Norwich. A pop ...

in Norfolk, retaining the seat for nearly 34 years until the 1768 election, when his first cousin the Hon.

Richard Walpole Richard Walpole (1728–1798) was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1768 to 1784. Walpole was born on 5 December 1728, the son of Horatio Walpole of Wolterton Hall and his wife Mary Magdalen Lombard. He was captain of an ...

(son of Lord Walpole of Wolterton) replaced him. On 7 September 1737 the Duke of Devonshire was named

Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (), or more formally Lieutenant General and General Governor of Ireland, was the title of the chief governor of Ireland from the Williamite Wars of 1690 until the Partition of Ireland in 1922. This spanned the King ...

, and Walpole his Chief Secretary, though he also continued as Secretary to the Treasury. Walpole was sworn of the

Privy Council of Ireland His or Her Majesty's Privy Council in Ireland, commonly called the Privy Council of Ireland, Irish Privy Council, or in earlier centuries the Irish Council, was the institution within the Dublin Castle administration which exercised formal execu ...

on 8 October that year and stood for

Ballyshannon Ballyshannon () is a town in County Donegal, Ireland. It is located at the southern end of the county where the N3 from Dublin ends and the N15 crosses the River Erne. Incorporated in 1613, it is one of the oldest towns in Ireland. Locati ...

in the

Irish House of Commons The Irish House of Commons was the lower house of the Parliament of Ireland that existed from 1297 until 1800. The upper house was the House of Lords. The membership of the House of Commons was directly elected, but on a highly restrictive fran ...

, a seat he held until 1760. On 9 May 1739 Edward Walpole's elder brother Robert, Lord Walpole resigned his post of

Clerk of the Pells The Pell Office was a department of the Exchequer in which the receipts and payments were entered upon two rolls of parchment, the one called the ''introitta'', which was the record of monies received, and the other the ''exitus'', or the record of ...

in order to become an

Auditor of the Exchequer The Auditor of the Receipt of the Exchequer was an office in the English Exchequer. The office originated in early times as the clerk of the Lord High Treasurer at the Receipt of the Exchequer. He was responsible for filing and entering the Teller' ...

, and Edward was appointed to succeed him, holding the office until his death. On 27 August 1753 Walpole was made a Knight Companion of the

Order of the Bath The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved bathing (as a symbol of purification) a ...

, the order re-founded by his father in 1725. Frogmore House, Windsor Great Park - geograph

Family

Walpole lived for a time at

Frogmore House Frogmore House is a 17th-century English country house owned by the Crown Estate. It is a historic Grade I listed building. The house is located on the Frogmore estate, which is situated within the grounds of the Home Park in Windsor, Berks ...

in Windsor,

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...

which he bought in 1748 and sold in 1766. He then bought a house in Windsor, which he gave to his daughter Laura Keppel in 1778, and spent his last years in Isleworth, where he died in 1784. He had never married, but had a son (who predeceased him) and three daughters by his partner Dorothy Clement: * Laura, who married 13 September 1758 the Hon. and Rev.

Frederick Keppel Frederick Keppel (19 January 1728 – 27 December 1777) was a Church of England clergyman, Bishop of Exeter. Background Keppel was the fifth and fourth surviving son of Willem van Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle and his wife Lady Anne Lenno ...

(later

Bishop of Exeter The Bishop of Exeter is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Exeter in the Province of Canterbury. Since 30 April 2014 the ordinary has been Robert Atwell.

) and died 27 July 1813, leaving issue; * Maria, who married firstly 15 May 1759, the Earl Waldegrave, and secondly 6 September 1766, the Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh and died 22 August 1807, leaving issue by both marriages; *Edward, born 22 August 1737 and died 1771, without issue; * Charlotte, born 9 December 1738,''The Third Register Book of the Parish of St James in the Liberty of Westminster For Births & Baptisms. 1723-1741''. 3 January 1738. married 2 October 1760 Lionel Tollemache, Lord Huntingtower (later Earl of Dysart) and died 5 September 1789, without issue.

References

Sources

* John Burke, '' A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland and Scotland, extinct, dormant and in abeyance'', Colburn and Bentley, 1831 * Joseph Haydn and Horace Ockerby (ed.), ''The Book of Dignities'', 3rd edition, W.H. Allen and Co. Ltd, 1894, reprinted 1969
thepeerage.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walpole, Edward 1706 births 1784 deaths People from Windsor, Berkshire Children of prime ministers of the United Kingdom People educated at Eton College Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Members of Lincoln's Inn Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies British MPs 1727–1734 British MPs 1734–1741 British MPs 1741–1747 British MPs 1747–1754 British MPs 1754–1761 British MPs 1761–1768 Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Donegal constituencies Irish MPs 1727–1760 Knights Companion of the Order of the Bath Members of the Privy Council of Ireland Robert Walpole Younger sons of earls Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for constituencies in Cornwall Politics of the Borough of Great Yarmouth

Edward Edward is an English given name. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements '' ēad'' "wealth, fortune; prosperous" and '' weard'' "guardian, protector”. History The name Edward was very popular in Anglo-Sax ...

Chief Secretaries for Ireland