Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole came from the gentry, a country squire first elected to Parliament in 1701. He climbed through senior posts until the South Sea Bubble crisis brought him to Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1720, where his handling of the wreckage - and perceived protection of allies - marked him. From 1721 to 1742 he served as First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the Commons, the stretch that made him the de facto first Prime Minister. His method was middle-way pragmatism: he worked for peace, lower taxes, growing exports, a little tolerance for Protestant Dissenters, and he avoided the fights that split rooms. W. A. Speck called the uninterrupted twenty years "one of the major feats of British political history," a blend of the crown's fading powers and the Commons' rising weight. He safeguarded the Hanoverian succession, sustained the Whig party, and left a template for every prime minister after.