ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Sir Robert Walpole first establishment and then maintains his unique personal supremacy over both the Whig party and the King's government under the first two Hanoverians. The hegemony of Sir Robert Walpole, therefore, witnessed the triumph of realism and pragmatism. Understanding British politics in the age of Walpole must logically begin with an understanding of the hegemony of Walpole himself. Before Queen Anne's death, Walpole was being seen as a man of the future, marked out by his insatiable appetite for work, his pugnacity and dexterity in debate, and most of all by his impressive mastery of the details of public finance. The age of Walpole was a practical, dispassionate, utilitarian age: one in which great ideals and fiercely conflicting ideologies were of waning importance. One of the prime consequences of this was that politics, especially by George II's reign, became more personal and intimate than at any time since the Tudor period.
