Horace Walpole
Horace Walpole was born in London on September 24th, 1717 and is the Historian. At the age of 79, Horace Walpole biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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At the 1741 general election Walpole was elected Whig Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of Callington, Cornwall. He held this seat for thirteen years although he never visited Callington. Walpole entered Parliament shortly before his father's fall from power. In December 1741 the Opposition won its first majority vote in the Commons for twenty years. In January 1742 Walpole's government was still struggling in Parliament although by the end of the month Horace and other family members had successfully urged the Prime Minister to resign after a parliamentary defeat. Walpole's philosophy mirrored that of Edmund Burke, who was his contemporary. He was a classical liberal on issues such as abolitionism and the agitations of the American colonists.
Walpole delivered his maiden speech on 19 March against the successful motion that a Secret Committee be set up to enquire into Sir Robert Walpole's last ten years as Prime Minister. For the next three years Walpole spent most of his time with his father at his country house Houghton Hall in Norfolk. His father died in 1745 and left Walpole the remainder of the lease of his house in Arlington Street, London; £5,000 in cash; and the office of Collector of the Customs (worth £1,000 per annum). However he had died in debt, the total of which was in between £40,000 and £50,000.
In late 1745 Walpole and Gray resumed their friendship. Also that year the Jacobite Rising began. The position of Walpole was the fruit of his father's support for the Hanoverian dynasty and he knew that he was in danger:
Later parliamentary career: 1754–1768
In the House of Commons, Walpole represented one of the many rotten boroughs, Castle Rising, which consisted of underlying freeholds in four villages near Kings Lynn, Norfolk, from 1754 until 1757. At his home, he hung a copy of the warrant for the execution of King Charles I with the inscription "Major Charta" and wrote of "the least bad of all murders, that of a King". In 1756 he wrote:
Walpole worried that while his fellow Whigs fought amongst themselves, the Tories were gaining power, the result of which would be England delivered to an unlimited, absolute monarchy, "that authority, that torrent which I should in vain extend a feeble arm to stem".
In 1757 he wrote the anonymous pamphlet A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking, the first of his works to be widely reviewed.
In early 1757 old Horace Walpole of Wolterton died and was succeeded in the peerage by his son, who was then an MP for King's Lynn, thereby creating a vacancy. The electors of King's Lynn did not wish to be represented by a stranger and instead wanted someone with a connection to the Walpole family. The new Lord Walpole therefore wrote to his cousin requesting that he stand for the seat, saying his friends "were all unanimously of opinion that you were the only person who from your near affinity to my grandfather, whose name is still in the greatest veneration, and your own known personal abilities and qualifications, could stand in the gap on this occasion and prevent opposition and expence and perhaps disgrace to the family". In early 1757 Walpole was out of Parliament after vacating Castle Rising until his election that year to King's Lynn, a seat he would hold until his retirement from the Commons in 1768.
Walpole became a prominent opponent of the 1757 decision to execute Admiral John Byng.
