This date is often given as the beginning of Walpole's unofficial tenure as Prime Minister.

Walpole's first year as Prime Minister was also marked by the discovery of a Jacobite plot formed by Francis Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester.

Though her death did not end his personal influence with George II, who had grown loyal to the Prime Minister during the preceding years, Walpole's domination of government continued to decline.

Robert Jenkins hands a dismissive Prime Minister Robert Walpole his severed ear, as his companions lift off his wig to show the scar ; one of Walpole's associates displays total indifference, preferring to converse with a lady.

Newcastle continued in office after Walpole's fall and became more powerful on his younger brother Henry Pelham becoming Prime Minister in 1743.

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto ( 1764 ) is often regarded as the first true Gothic romance.

One aspect of Walpole's original definition of serendipity, often missed in modern discussions of the word, is the need for an individual to be " sagacious " enough to link together apparently innocuous facts in order to come to a valuable conclusion.

Another part of Walpole's legacy is 10 Downing Street.

Otranto is the setting of Horace Walpole's book, The Castle of Otranto, which is generally held to be the first gothic novel.

The standard edition of her letters is in the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence vols.

He has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes wonderful things, the first that he does not go by his right name ; the second that he never had any dealings with any woman-nay, nor with any wikt: succedaneum | succedaneum ( this was censored by Walpole's editors until 1954 ) He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible.

There is no sufficient ground for Horace Walpole's charge that the fall of Sir Robert was brought about by Hardwicke's treachery.

The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, a late 18th century novel which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre.

* First stage of Horace Walpole's Horace Walpole's Gothic Revival ' Castle ' at Strawberry Hill is completed.

Walpole's brief experience of teaching is reflected in his third novel Mr Perrin and Mr Traill.

His maiden speech, delivered on 13 November 1755, during the debate on the address, which excited Walpole's admiration, is generally supposed to have been his only effort in the House of Commons.

The attribution is moot: Michael Lort and Samuel Egerton Brydges supported Walpole's view.

The best account of the Faithornes is that contained in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.

The paper was aimed mainly towards the overthrow of Sir Robert Walpole's government ; there is some debate about its effects, with most historians agreeing it was doing little more than preaching to the converted.

Pitt was a leading advocate of a more hard-line policy against Spain, and often castigated Walpole's government for its weakness in dealing with Madrid.

The period 1736 – 37 was the height of Walpole's power as First Lord of the Treasury ( or, as some termed him in a slightly derogatory manner, the " prime minister "), and Walpole was under incessant attack by the Tory satirists and the radical Whig theorists alike.

Robert Walpole became a Privy Councillor and rose to the position of Paymaster of the Forces in a Cabinet nominally led by Lord Halifax, but actually dominated by Lord Townshend ( Walpole's brother-in-law ) and James Stanhope.

The individuals who had brought about Walpole's impeachment in 1712 were now themselves attacked for purely political reasons: Lord Oxford was impeached, and Lord Bolingbroke suffered from an act of attainder.

In Ireland, Lord Carteret used his power to secretly aid in the controversy over Wood's Halfpence and support Drapier's Letters behind the scenes and cause harm to Walpole's power.

His stately furniture designs complemented his interiors: he designed furnishings for Hampton Court Palace ( 1732 ), Lord Burlington's Chiswick House ( 1729 ), London, Thomas Coke's Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Robert Walpole's pile at Houghton, for Devonshire House in London, and at Rousham.

But see also Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II ( London, 1845 ); Lord Stanhope's History of England ( London, 1858 ); Lecky's History of England ( 1885 ); and ED Adams, The Influence of Grenville on Pitt's Foreign Policy ( Washington, 1904 ).

In 1731, at Houghton Hall, Sir Robert Walpole's country house in Norfolk, the Duke, with the Duke of Lorraine ( later the Holy Roman Emperor ), was made a Master Mason by the Grand Master, Lord Lovell, at an Occasional Lodge.

In 1725, Compton entered Walpole's government as Lord Privy Seal and was also created a Knight of the Bath.

In the following year he established his reputation as an equity lawyer in a case in which Robert Walpole's family was interested, by an argument displaying profound learning and research concerning the jurisdiction of the chancellor, on lines which he afterwards more fully developed in a celebrated letter to Lord Kames on the distinction between law and equity.

In 1733 Yorke was appointed lord chief justice of the king's bench, with the title of Lord Hardwicke, and was sworn of the privy council ; and in 1737 he succeeded Lord Talbot as lord chancellor, thus becoming a member of Walpole's cabinet.

In 1713, Lord Townshend married Robert Walpole's prettiest sister, Dorothy.

This format, with the quarters of the owner at the elevated center of their own world, found resonance as a prototype for Italian villas and later for the country estates of the British nobility ( such as Lord Burlington's Chiswick House, Vanbrugh's Blenheim, Walpole's Houghton Hall, and Adam's Kedleston Hall and Paxton House in Scotland ).

His tact and temper, his dexterity and discrimination, enabled him to do good service, and he was rewarded with Robert Walpole's friendship, the Order of the Garter in 1730, and the position of Lord Steward.

Regardless of Walpole's orders, the Irish Lord Justices did not act, Lord Shannon did not command that his troops should be issued Wood's coin, and Middleton's House of Lords and Conolly's House of Commons did not pass any resolution backing up Walpole's order, which effectively prevented the coin from being distributed.

He was a Lord of the Admiralty in 1741 until the dissolution of Sir Robert Walpole's government the following year.

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel.

Walpole's forgery, together with the blend of history and fiction that was contravening the principles of the Enlightenment, brought about the Gothic novel's association with fake documentation.

Clara Reeve, best known for her work The Old English Baron ( 1778 ), set out to take Walpole's plot and adapt it to the demands of the time by balancing fantastic elements with 18th-century realism.

The question now arose whether supernatural events that were not as evidently absurd as Walpole's would not lead the simpler minds to believe them possible.

Though Lewis's novel could be read as a pastiche of the emerging genre, self-parody was a constituent part of the Gothic from the time of the genre's inception with Walpole's Otranto.

The gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine of Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas ( 1864 ) shows the direct influence of both Walpole's Otranto and Radcliffe's Udolpho.

" He then puts on a Stetson, and the sketch segues into Hugh Walpole's Rogue Cheddar and a link to the Sam Peckinpah's " Salad Days " sketch.

For over 40 years after Walpole's fall in 1742, there was widespread ambivalence about the position.

In 1741, during the attack that led to Walpole's downfall, Samuel Sandys declared that " According to our Constitution we can have no sole and prime minister.

This position was attacked by English Austrophiles who wanted to aid the Austrians against France, but Walpole's dominant position ensured that Britain stayed out of the conflict.

He was out of power for most of his career, and became famous for his attacks on the government, such as Walpole's corruption in the 1730s, Hanoverian subsidies in the 1740s, peace with France in the 1760s, and the uncompromising policy toward the American colonies in the 1770s.

He spoke in favour of the motion in 1742 for an inquiry into the last ten years of Walpole's administration.

Pope used the model of Horace to satirise life under George II, especially what he regarded as the widespread corruption tainting the country under Walpole's influence and the poor quality of the court's artistic taste.

Walpole's political career began in January 1701 when he won the general election in Castle Rising — the constituency once represented by his father who had died just three months earlier.

Walpole's service in these offices made him a close advisor of the Duke of Marlborough, the commander of British forces in the War of the Spanish Succession and a dominant force in British politics.

Soon after Walpole's resignation, a bitter family quarrel between the King and the Prince of Wales split the Royal Family.

During the remainder of George I's reign, Walpole's ascendancy continued ; the political power of the monarch was gradually diminishing and that of his ministers gradually increasing.