Customer Reviews

Walpole in Power

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I'm sorry to Jeremy Black for not giving him 5 *'s, but Robert Walpole as Black describes him was nothing but a manager and manipulator of Parliament and the various Kings George, that i could not bear granting the book 5 *'s. Plus, Black's book was long on weekly, monthly and yearly description of Walpole's activities, but short on in depth cultural analysis of this development in the English Constitution.

Granted, Walpole was the true first English Prime Minister; what profoundly did this mean? Surely it had to mean more than the maestro of governmental patronage?

I found, as yes, an American, it shocking that Black virtually never referred to Walpole's interest or non-interest, or interventions or non-interventions, in the bubbling movement toward independence in the colonies during his watch, which long anticipated in 1765, or certainly 1775. Surely this inattention altered what was once called the British Empire the most?

I found it interesting on p. 32 that Cardinal Fleury of France, succesor of Richlieu and Mazarin, pressed for Walpole to keep his job after the South Sea Bubble. On pp. 107-8, Black shows how Walpole was no fan of a free press.

On p. 120, Black quotes Walpole as having little religious faith, being a non-intellectual, and one who would laugh at religion. All this was during the time when Anglicanism was losing the 'battle' against Methodism, then Unitarianism. He dealt with church management in the same way he dealt with civil managment, just as a matter of who should be assigned where, to his benefit. Is it causational that this diminishment of Christian faith led to the sunset over the British Empire?

It was (is) a shame that Walpole, by his lack of thinking and inaction, allowed Anglicanism to slip into a vanilla mush, and that Jeremy Black seems not to have seen that, though "Walpole [was] in [micro-political] Power, that this was close to meaningless in the long run.