Later Years
Lord Orford was succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord Wilmington in an administration whose true head was Lord Carteret. A committee was created to inquire into Walpole's ministry but no substantial evidence of wrongdoing or corruption was discovered. Though no longer a member of the Cabinet, Lord Orford continued to maintain personal influence with George II and was often dubbed the "Minister behind the Curtain" for this advice and influence. In 1744 he managed to secure the dismissal of Carteret and the appointment of Henry Pelham whom he regarded as a political protégé. He advised Pelham to make use of his seat in the Commons to serve as a bridge between the King and Parliament, just as Walpole had done.
His health, never good, deteriorated rapidly toward the end of 1744; Lord Orford died in London in 1745, aged nearly sixty-nine years; he was buried in his home estate of Houghton. His earldom passed to his eldest son Robert who was in turn succeeded by his only son George. Upon the death of the third Earl, the Earldom was inherited by the first Earl's younger son Horace Walpole (a famous writer and friend of poet Thomas Gray), who died without heirs in 1797.
Read more about this topic: Robert Walpole
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“These young women have had four years of very special space.... This has been special space. This has been safe space. But when they graduate, they will begin to deal on a daily basis, all day long, month after month, year after year, with the realities that still haunt our nation.”
—Johnnetta Betsch Cole (b. 1936)