Robert Walpole

First Lord of the Treasury from 1721 to 1742, and by convention the first British prime minister, an office he denied holding.

PersonHigh confidence

Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review

Identity, lifespan 1676–1745 and conventional first-prime-minister tenure 1721–1742.

UK Government — Past Prime Ministers: Robert Walpole
Identity, lifespan 1676–1745 and conventional first-prime-minister tenure 1721–1742.
Wikidata entity identity and cross-references
The entity identity and its recorded authority identifiers; not an independent authority-register validation.

What this check doesn’t establish

The exact wording and date of the denial are left to the Coxe work record; no present-day door-plate claim is made.
VIAF/ROR values were cross-checked against the Wikidata entity; the external authority registry itself was not independently inspected.

Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works

By convention Britain’s first prime minister, Walpole served as First Lord of the Treasury from 1721 to 1742. The essay uses his career as an example of an office that developed through practice.

Its account of his denial of the title is attributed to Coxe’s Memoirs; the exact passage is a question for that edition.

In the essays

For the Love of Law
Read the essay

Sources

Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole

Record history

Catalogue source: knowledge/people/robert-walpole.md

Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25