- Spencer Walpole
Sir Spencer Walpole (
February 6 ,1830 –July 7 ,1907 ) was an Englishhistorian and civil servant.He came of the younger branch of the family of the famous Whig prime minister,
Robert Walpole , being descended from his brother, the 1st Lord Walpole of Wolterton. He was the son of the latter's great-grandson, the Right Hon.Spencer Horatio Walpole (1807-1898), three times home secretary underEdward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby , and through his mother was grandson ofSpencer Perceval , theTory prime minister who was murdered in the House of Commons.Spencer Walpole was educated at Eton, and from 1858 to 1867 was a clerk in the
War Office , then becoming an inspector of fisheries. In 1882 he was made lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Man, and from 1893 to 1899 he was secretary to thePost Office . In 1898 he wasknight ed.Although well known as a most efficient public servant, and in private life as a well-liked man, Walpole is chiefly remembered as an historian. His family connexions gave him a natural bent to the study of public affairs, and their mingling of Whig and Tory in politics contributed, no doubt, to that quality of judicious balance--inclining, however, to the Whig or moderate Liberal side--which, together with his sanity and accuracy, is so characteristic of his writings. His principal work, the "History of England from 1815" (1878-1886), in six volumes, was carried down to 1858, and was continued in his "History of Twenty-Five Years" (1904).
Among his other publications come his lives of Spencer Perceval (1894) and Lord John Russell (1889), and a volume of valuable "Studies in Biography" (1906).
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