edited with an introduction by A. F. Steuart (London, 1909). To these works should be added the Reminiscences (2 vols., 1819), which Walpole wrote in 1788 for the gratification of the Misses Berry. These labours would in themselves have rendered the name of Horace Walpole famous for all time, but his delightful Letters are the crowning glory of his life. His correspondents were numerous and widespread, but the chief of them were William Cole (1714–1782), the clerical antiquary of Milton; Robert Jephson, the dramatist; William Mason, the poet. Lord Hertford during his embassy in Paris; the countess of Ossory; Lord Harcourt; George Montagu, his friend at Eton; Henry Seymour Conway (1721–1795) and Sir Horace Mann. With most of these friends he quarrelled, but the friendship of ihc last two, in the former case through genuine liking, and in the latter through his fortunate absence from England, was never interrupted. The Letters were published at different dates, but the standard collection is that by Mrs Paget Toynbee (1903–1905), and to it should be added the volumes of the letters addressed to Walpole by his old friend Madame du Deffand (4 vols., 1810). Dr Doran’s publication, Mann and Manners at the Court of Florence (1876), is founded on the epistles sent in return to Walpole by the envoy-extraordinary Other works relating to him are Horace Walpole and his World, by L. B. Seeley (1884); Horace Walpole, a memoir by Austin Dobson (1890 and 1893); Horace Walpole and the Strawberry Hill Press, by M. A. Havens (1901). Walpole has been called “the best letter-writer in the English language”; and few indeed are the names which can compare with his. In these compositions his very foibles are penned for our amusement, and his love of trifles—for, in the words of another Horace, he was ever “nescio quid meditans nugarum et totus in illis”—ministers to our instruction. To these friends he communicated every fashionable scandal, every social event, and the details of every political struggle in English life. The politicians and the courtiers of his day were more akin to his character than were the chief authors of his age, and the weakness of his intellectual perceptions stands out most prominently in his estimates of such writers as Johnson and Goldsmith, Gibbon and Hume. On many occasions he displayed great liberality of disposition, and he bitterly deplored for the rest of his days his neglect of the unhappy Chatterton. Chatterton wrote to Walpole in 1769, sending some prose and verse fragments and offering to place information on English art in Walpole’s hands. Encouraged by a kindly reply, Chatterton appealed for help. Walpole made inquiries and came to the conclusion that he was an imposter. He finally returned the manuscripts in his possession, and took no notice of subsequent letters from Chatterton.
Abundant information about Horace Walpole will be found in the Memoirs of him and of his contemporaries edited by Eliot Warburton (1851). J. H. Jesse’s George Selwyn and his Contemporaries (4 vols., 1843–1844) and the extracts from the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry (3 vols., 1866); and it would be unpardonable to omit mention of Macaulay’s sketch of Walpole’s life and character. (W. P. C.)
WALPOLE, SIR SPENCER (1839–1907), English historian and civil servant, was born on the 6th of February 1839. He came of the younger branch of the family of the famous Whig prime minister, 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), thrice home secretary under Lord Derby, and through his mother was grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Tory prime minister who was murdered in the House of Commons. He 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 the Post Office. In 1898 he was created K.C.B. Although well known as a most efficient public servant, and in private life as the most amiable of men, Sir Spencer Walpole’s real title to remembrance is 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); and he wrote the section of the article English History, dealing in detail with the reign of Queen Victoria, for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He died on the 7th of July 1907.
WALPOLE OF WOLTERTON, HORATIO, 1st Baron (1678–1757), English diplomatist, was a son of Robert Walpole of Houghton, Norfolk, and a younger brother of the great Sir Robert Walpole. The Walpoles owned land in Norfolk in the 12th century and took their name from Walpole, a village in the county An early member of the family was Ralph de Walpole, bishop of Norwich from 1288 to 1299, and bishop of Ely from 1 299 until his death on the 20th of March 1302. Among its later members were three brothers, Edward (1560–1637), Richard (1564–1607) and Michael (1570–c. 1634), all members of the Society of Jesus. Another Jesuit in the family was Henry Walpole (1558–1595), who wrote An Epitaph of the life and death of the most famous clerk and virtuous priest Edmund Campion. After an adventurous and courageous career in the service of the order, he was arrested on landing in England, was tortured and then put to death on the 17th of April 1595.[1]
Born at Houghton on the 8th of December 1678 and educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, Horatio Walpole became a fellow of King’s and entered parliament in 1702, remaining a member for fifty-four years. In 1715, when his brother. Sir Robert, became first lord of the treasury, he was made secretary to the treasury, and in 1716, having already had some experience of the kind, he went on a diplomatic mission to The Hague. He left office with his brother in 1717, but he was soon in harness again, becoming secretary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1720 and secretary to the treasury a second time in 1721. In 1722 he was again at The Hague, and in 1723 he went to Paris, where in the following year he was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. He got on intimate terms with Fleury and seconded his brother in his efforts to maintain friendly relations with France; he represented Great Britain at the congress of Soissons and helped to conclude the treaty of Seville (November 1729). He left Paris in 1730 and in 1734 went to represent his country at The Hague, where he remained until 1740, using all his influence in the cause of European peace. After the fall of Sir Robert Walpole in 1742 Horatio defended his conduct in the House of Commons and also in a pamphlet, The Interest of Great Britain steadily pursued. Later he wrote an Apology, dealing with his own conduct from 1715 to 1739, and an Answer to the latter part of Lord Bolingbroke’s letters on the study of history (printed 1763). In 1756 he was created Baron Walpole of Wolterton, this being his Norfolk seat, and he died on the 5th of February 1757. His eldest son, Hgratio, the 2nd baron (1723–1809), was created earl of Orford in 1806, and one of his sons was Major-General George Walpole (1758–1835), under-secretary for foreign affairs in 1806.
See W. Coxe, Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole (2nd ed., 1808); the same writer, Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole (1816); and Charles, comte de Baillon, Lord Walpole à la cour de France (1867).
WALPURGIS (Walpurga or Walburga),[2] ST (d. c. 780), English missionary to Germany, was born in Sussex at the beginning of the 8th century. She was the sister of Willibald, the first bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria, and Wunnibald, first abbot of Heidenheim. Her father, Richard, is thought to have been a son of Hlothere, 9th king of Kent; her mother, Winna or Wuna, a sister of St Boniface. At the instance of Boniface and Willibald she went about 750 with some other nuns to found
- ↑ The Letters of Henry Walpole, S.J., from the original manuscripts at Stonyhurst College, were edited by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp for private circulation (1873). See the Rev, A. Jessopp, One Generation of a Norfolk House (1878).
- ↑ French forms of the name are Gualbourg, Falbourg, Vaubourg and Avougourg.
