Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington

Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington KG PC (c. 1674 – 2 July 1743) was a British Whig statesman who served continuously in government from 1715 until his death in 1743. He sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1698 and 1728, and was then raised to the peerage and sat in the House of Lords. He served as the prime minister of Great Britain from 1742 until his death in 1743. He is considered to have been Britain's second prime minister, after Robert Walpole, but worked closely with the Secretary of State, Lord Carteret, in order to secure the support of the various factions making up the government.

I have neither memory to retain, judgment to collect, nor skill to guide, their debates; nor can I boast of any thing that could entitle me to the favor of the Commons, but an unshaken fidelity to the Protestant succession.

Quotes

• I have neither memory to retain, judgment to collect, nor skill to guide, their debates; nor can I boast of any thing that could entitle me to the favor of the Commons, but an unshaken fidelity to the Protestant succession.
  • Address to George I in the House of Lords (21 March 1715), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. VII. A.D. 1714–1722 (1811), column 41

Quotes about Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington

• The President is as contemptible and subservient as ever.
  • Lord Chesterfield to Lord Marchmont (15 June 1734), quoted in The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield' Including Numerous Letters Now First Published From the Original Manuscripts, Vol. III, ed. Lord Mahon (1847), p. 96

• [L]et me humbly and earnestly, for God's sake, for the sake of your own glory, for the love of your king and your country, which I know is sincere and ardent in you; let me entreat your lordship to go to the king without loss of time, and say to him what your own honour and excellent understanding shall suggest to you upon the present occasion. You are unsuspected by him on all sides: he cannot in thought object any thing to you with relation to his son; you, and you only, have all the talents and all the requisites that this critical time demands to effectuate this great event, and save your country, if it be to be saved.
  • George Dodington to The Earl of Wilmington (25 January 1741), quoted in William Coxe, Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, Volume the Third (1798), p. 589

• My Lord Wilmington is about 65 years old, strong made, but of late much troubled with the stone. His stature is something more than of the middle sort and he is not corpulent though full fleshed. He is proud, though affable to those who visit him, and is rare of his speech, but then positive. He maintains no debates in the House of Peers, but never swerved from voting as the Ministry would have him, being very servile to his Majesty's inclinations. He has no great genius, but cannot want experience, having formerly been Speaker of the House of Commons, and for many years President of the Council, which post he executes notably well. He is extremely covetous, and formal in business, was never married, but has children unlawfully begotten, which he stifles the knowledge of as much as in him lies. He has no ambition, and has told me the true interest of England was to have no chief minister, but that every great office should be immediately dependent on the King and answer for itself. He also is for making the basis of the Government so broad, that many interests may be taken into it, but I believe he will be for leaving the King's power as great as he can contribute to make it.
  • Lord Egmont, diary entry (9 February 1742), quoted in Manuscripts of The Earl of Egmont. Diary of The First Earl of Egmont (Viscount Percival). Vol. III. 1739–1747: With Appendices and Index (1923), p. 250

• It is reported of Sir Spencer Compton, that when he was Speaker, he used to answer to a Member, who called upon him to make the House quiet, for that he had a right to be heard; "No, Sir, you have a right to speak, but the House have a right to judge whether they will hear you." In this he was certainly mistaken; the Member has a right to speak, and the House ought to attend to him, and it is the Speaker's duty to endeavour, for that that purpose, to keep them silent; but where the love of talking gets the better of modesty and good-sense, which sometimes happens, it is a duty very difficult to execute in a large and popular assembly.
  • John Hatsell, Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons, under separate titles; with observations (1781), pp. 68-69

• Sir Spencer Compton was at this time Speaker of the House of Commons, Treasurer to the Prince, and Paymaster to the army, he was a plodding, heavy fellow, with great application, but no talents, and vast complaisance for a Court without any address; he was always more concerned for the manner and form in which a thing was to be done than about the propriety or expediency of the thing itself; and as he was calculated to execute rather than to project, for a subaltern rather than a commander, so he was much fitter for a clerk to a minister than for a minister to a Prince; whatever was resolved upon, he would often know how properly to perform, but seldom how to advise what was proper to be resolved upon. His only pleasures were money and eating; his only knowledge forms and precedents; and his only insinuation bows and smiles.
  • Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second from His Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline, Vol. I, ed. John Wilson Croker (1848), pp. 32-33

• But as Sir Spencer Compton had conceived too strong hopes of being Sir Robert's superior ever to serve in the House of Commons quietly under him, and that it might be dangerous, consequently, to suffer him in the chair of a new Parliament, Sir Robert advised the making him a peer; accordingly he was created Baron of Wilmington... [H]e did not seem to feel the ridicule or the contemptibleness of his situation: that snowball levee of his, which had opened and that gathered so fast, melted away at as quick a pace; his visionary prospects of authority and grandeur vanished into air; and yet he seemed just as well satisfied to be bowing and grinning in the antechamber, possessed of a lucrative employment without credit, and dishonoured by a title which was the mark of his disgrace, as if he had been dictating in the closet, sole fountain of Court favour at home, and regulator of all the national transactions abroad.
  • Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second from His Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline, Vol. I, ed. John Wilson Croker (1848), pp. 52-53

• He was very able, however, in the chair, but had not the powers of speech out of it.
  • Arthur Onslow, quoted in The Manuscripts of The Earl of Buckinghamshire, The Earl of Lindsey, The Earl of Onslow, Lord Emly, Theodore J. Hare, Esq., and James Round, Esq., M.P. (1895), p. 516

• This disquiet and habit of never finishing, which, too, proceeded frequently from his beginning everything twenty times over, gave rise to a famous bon mot of Lord Wilmington,—a man as unapt to attempt saying a good thing, as to say one. He said, "the Duke of Newcastle always loses half an hour in the morning, which he is running after the rest of the day without being able to overtake it."
  • Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second, Vol. I (1846), pp. 162-163

• See yon old, dull important Lord,
  Who at the long'd-for Money-Board
  Sits first, but does not lead:
  His younger Brethren all Things make;
  So that the T[reasur]y's like a Snake,
  And the Tail moves the Head.
  • Charles Hanbury Williams, A New Ode, to a Great Number of Great Men, Newly Made (1742), p. 3