Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/185

 was a younger brother of [q. v.], the jesuit. Calibut's eldest son and heir, Robert Walpole (the statesman's great-grandfather), was father of Edward Walpole of Houghton. This Edward (the statesman's grandfather) was forward in promoting the restoration of Charles II, for which service he was created knight of the Bath on 19 April 1661. He was elected to parliament for the borough of King's Lynn in 1660, and again in 1661, and is said to have been an active and eloquent member of the House of Commons, and to have commanded the respect of all parties (, Peerage, v. 560). He died, 18 March 1667–8, having been the father of thirteen children. Of these the eldest, Robert, born on 18 Nov. 1650, was the father of the statesman. Robert Walpole, the father, was first returned for the borough of Castle Rising as a whig on 12 Jan. 1689, and again in 1695 and 1698. Coxe represents him to have been an illiterate boor of the type of Squire Western. But according to Dean Prideaux, a somewhat censorious contemporary, he was the most influential whig leader in Norfolk. He had been guardian to Lord Townshend, who was candidate in 1700 for the reversion of the lord-lieutenancy of the county [see, second ]. Upon him depended the goodwill of the important personages of the county in favour of his former ward. ‘Beside him [Walpole] there is not a man of any parts or interest in all that party’ (Letters to John Ellis, Camden Soc. 1875, p. 195). He was a deputy lieutenant for Norfolk and colonel of militia. He died on 18 Nov. 1700, aged 50. His wife was Mary, only daughter and heiress of Sir Geoffrey Burwell of Rougham, Suffolk, knight. She died on 14 March 1711, aged 58. By her he had nineteen children. Sir Robert was the fifth child and the third son. , lord Walpole [q. v.], was the fifth son.

Sir Robert Walpole is stated by Coxe to have been born at Houghton, but no record of his birth or baptism appears in the parish register. A scurrilous mock creed composed during his ministry represents his real father to have been ‘Burrell the attorney.’ At the time of Sir Robert's death, on 18 March 1745, a variety of statements were current as to his age. In a letter to General Churchill, dated 24 June 1743, he reckons himself as having turned sixty-seven. As his birthday was without question on 26 Aug., this would make 1675 the year of his birth. His son Horace confirmed this to Coxe. But the register at Houghton states his age at death in 1745 to have been sixty-eight, not sixty-nine. According to a manuscript in his mother's hand, headed ‘Age of my Children,’ Robert, the fifth child, was born on 26 Aug. 1676. That Mrs. Walpole's entry was correct is apparent from the fact that her sixth child, John, who died young, was born on 3 Sept. 1677, and her seventh, Horatio, on 8 Dec. 1678. The Eton College register, which Coxe had not seen, erroneously records his age as twelve on 4 Sept. 1690, the day of his admission; and his birthday, according to a convention common in the register, is there set down as St. Bartholomew's day (24 Aug.), that being the nearest saint's day to the actual date. On 5 Aug. 1695 the register records his election to King's College, Cambridge, at the age of seventeen. Thus these two entries falsely assign 1678 as the year of his birth. The falsification was deliberate. Walpole was really close upon nineteen years of age at the beginning of August 1695. According to the statutes of Eton and of King's College, he would be superannuated and lose his chance of a King's scholarship unless a vacancy occurred before his twentieth birthday; and he was not captain of the school, but only third on the list. The false entries gave him a margin of two years within which he could avail himself of a vacancy at King's.

Before Walpole's admission to Eton he was, according to Coxe, at a private school at Massingham, Norfolk. Little and Great Massingham are villages a few miles from Houghton. Coxe states that he left Eton ‘an excellent scholar.’ The headmaster, John Newborough, a scholar of repute, took a particular interest in him. Upon being told of the success of another pupil, the brilliant St. John, in the House of Commons, Newborough replied, ‘But I am impatient to hear that Robert Walpole has spoken, for I am convinced that he will be a good orator.’ Walpole left Eton on 2 April 1696, and was admitted at King's on 22 April. While in residence at Cambridge he suffered from a severe attack of small-pox. Later in life he recounted a saying of Dr. [q. v.], the physician who attended him, that ‘his singular escape seemed a sure indication that he was reserved for important purposes.’

On 25 May 1698 Walpole resigned his scholarship and left Cambridge, owing to the death in that year of his eldest brother, Edward. His second brother, Burwell, had already been killed in the battle of Beachy Head [see ] on 30 June 1690. Robert therefore became heir to the estate. Although his connection with