5. _Sir_ ROBERT WALPOLE, afterward Earl of Orford. He was born at Houghton, in 1674. In 1700, he was chosen member of Parliament for Lynn, which he also represented in many succeeding parliaments. In 1705 he was made one of the council to Prince George of Denmark, as lord high admiral. In 1707 he was made secretary at war; and in 1709 treasurer of the navy. On the change of the ministry, the year following, he was removed from all his places, and in 1711 was voted by the house of commons guilty of notorious corruption, in his office as secretary at war: it was therefore resolved that he should be committed to the tower, and expelled the house. But being considered by the whigs as a kind of martyr to their cause, the borough of Lynn rechose him, and though the house declared his election void, yet the electors persisted in their choice, and he sat in the next parliament. On the accession of George I. he was appointed paymaster-general of the forces, and a privy counsellor; but in a disagreement, two years after, with Mr. Secretary Stanhope, he resigned, turned patriot, of course, and opposed the ministry. Early in 1720 he was again made pay-master of the forces, and the complaisance of the courtier began once more to appear: nor was it long before he acquired full ministerial power, as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. The measures of his administration, during the long course of his premiership, have been often canvassed, with all the severity of critical inquiry, and variously determined. Though he has been called the father of corruption, and is said to have boasted, that he knew every man’s price, yet the opposition prevailed over him in 1742, and obliged him to resign. He was screened from any further resentment of the house of commons, by a peerage, being created Earl of Orford, and gratified with a pension of 4000_l_ a year. He is generally allowed to have been a minister of considerable talents, and a notable manager of parliaments. Whatever were his faults, and he doubtless had many, he was evidently a _man of peace_, and _no war minister_, which ought to endear his memory to posterity. Had his successors, and particularly the late minister _Pitt_, been more of his disposition in that respect, it had probably, at this time, been a happy circumstance for the British empire, if not also for some other nations.