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Thomas Walpole

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Thomas Walpole, 1764 engraving

Thomas Walpole (6 October 1727 – March 1803), styled from 1756 The Hon. Thomas Walpole, was a British MP and banker in Paris.

Life

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Thomas Walpole was born into a political family. The second son of the 1st Baron Walpole and his wife Telisha, nee Lombard, he was the nephew of Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister from 1721 to 1742.

Walpole entered into partnership with the merchant Sir Joshua Vanneck,[1] and married his daughter Elizabeth Vanneck on 14 November 1753. She died on 9 June 1760.[2]

He was MP for Sudbury from 1754 to 1761, and MP for Ashburton from 1761 to 1768. In 1762 he was involved in efforts to engineer William Pitt the Elder into a rapprochement with the Duke of Newcastle.[3] In 1768 he succeeded his cousin Horace Walpole as MP for Lynn, sitting until 1784, when he was succeeded by his nephew Horatio Walpole.

From 1753 to 1754 he served as a Director of the East India Company. In the early 1770s Walpole led a group of investors, including Benjamin Franklin, to seek from the crown a land grant in Ohio.[4]

Walpole House, Chiswick Mall

In 1787 he married his second wife, Jeanne-Marguerite Batailhe de Montval.[2] From 1799 until his death Walpole lived in a large house, today named Walpole House, on Chiswick Mall, Chiswick.[5]

His son Thomas (1755–1840) was British Ambassador to Munich.[6]


References

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  1. ^ William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle, eds., Correspondence of William Pitt, John Murray, 1838, vol. 2, p. 328
  2. ^ a b Neil Jeffares, Iconographical genealogies: Walpole, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, Online edition, 2008
  3. ^ George Thomas, Earl of Albemarle, Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and his contemporaries, 149-151
  4. ^ Report of the Lords commissioners for trade and plantations on the petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, esquires, and their associates for a grant of lands on the River Ohio, in North America, for the purpose of erecting a new government : with observations and remarks, 1772. B.A. Hinsdale. "The Western Land Policy of the British Government from 1763 to 1775." Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly. Volume I (December 1887) 207-229.
  5. ^ 'GRAND HOUSES', chiswickhistory.org.uk
  6. ^ "Walpole, Thomas (WLPL773T)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
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Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Sudbury
17541761
With: Thomas Fonnereau
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Ashburton
17611768
With: John Harris 1761–1767
Robert Palk 1767–1768
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Lynn
17681784
With: Sir John Turner, Bt 1768–1774
Crisp Molineux 1774–1784
Succeeded by