Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole
Coxe's 1798 life of Walpole, and the source for Walpole's denial in the Commons that he was sole and prime minister.
Book · 1798Sources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
1798 volume identity, denial passage and Coxe’s explanation of his sources.
- Coxe, Memoirs of Walpole, volume 1: digitisation and OCR
OCR contains the sole-and-prime-minister denial and the footnote drawing on Walpole’s handwritten parliamentary minutes and Chandler.
- OpenLibrary work API: Memoirs of the life and administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford
Inspected work title and linked author identities; catalogue identity does not establish a particular edition or validate the content.
- OpenLibrary linked author record
Author identity checked against the linked catalogue work; not used to establish the work’s factual argument.
What this check doesn’t establish
- OCR contains errors and was not collated against page images. A reconstructed speech is not a verbatim parliamentary transcript; exact page/date locators still merit image checking.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
The source of Walpole's denial, delivered in the Commons on 13 February 1741 on Samuel Sandys' motion for an address seeking his removal. As Coxe gives it:
But while I unequivocally deny that I am sole and prime-minister, and that to my influence and direction all the measures of government must be attributed, yet I will not shrink from the responsibility which attaches to the post I have the honour to hold...
One caveat the essay does not need but the record should carry. Coxe's footnote says the substance is taken from parliamentary minutes in Walpole's own handwriting, together with Chandler's Debates. The wording is attested in a documented 1798 source drawing on Walpole's own notes; it is not a transcript.
In the essays
- For the Love of Law
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Catalogue source: knowledge/works/coxe-memoirs-of-walpole.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25