To Serve My Friends
Jonathan Parry, 27 January 2022
Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and Its Empire, 1600-1850
by Mark Knights.
Oxford, 488 pp., £35, December 2021,978 0 19 879624 4 Show More
by Mark Knights.
Oxford, 488 pp., £35, December 2021,
“... in the 1720s, Robert Walpole gave posts to six members of his family (brothers, sons and in-laws), as well as to other long-time supporters, prompting the charge that Britain was governed by a ‘Robinocracy’. As late as 1831, Earl Grey was accused of securing offices for his family retinue worth £60,000 a year, even as his government introduced ... ”