Walpole to Shelburne

Abstract

Britain’s first and longest-serving prime minister (having held the post of First Lord of the Treasury for almost 21 years), Walpole left office on 11 February 1742. He had already ceased to be an MP, having a few days earlier accepted a peerage and been created Earl of Orford. He had also obtained from the King a pension of £4,000 a year (worth over £450,000 a year in today’s money), though Walpole chose not to apply for his first payment for two years, perhaps because it might have aroused controversy in the immediate aftermath of his resignation. He continued to live in Number 10 Downing Street for several more months before he moved out to take up residence in a house in Arlington Street in St James’s as his new London base. Sixty-five years old, he was to live for another three years as ‘the ex-minister’.¹