Robert Walpole (colonel)

Colonel Robert Walpole (18 November 1650 – 18 November 1700) was an English Whig politician and militia officer who served as a member of parliament for the borough of Castle Rising from 1689 to 1700.

[3] His father ardently supported the Restoration of the Monarchy to King Charles II and was subsequently created a Knight of the Bath.

[6] In January 1689, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Castle Rising in Norfolk,[7] and was considered the most influential Whig in Norfolk and one of the most influential Whigs in Parliament.

In 1671 he married Mary Burwell, daughter and heiress of Sir Geoffrey Burwell of Rougham in Suffolk,[9][10] by whom he had nineteen children, of whom only nine survived, two being stillborn and eight dying in infancy:[11] In 1668 Walpole borrowed a German biography book about the Archbishop of Bremen from the library of Sidney Sussex College.

[18] It was finally found in 1956 when his descendant the 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley together with Professor John H. Plumb discovered the book in the library at Houghton.