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Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (5 December 1661 – 21 May 1724), was a British politician and statesman of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory Ministry. He was raised to the peerage as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a ''Prime Minister'',〔E. S. Roscoe, ''Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Prime Minister, 1710–14'' (London: Methuen, 1902).〕 though it is generally accepted that the position was first held by Sir Robert Walpole in 1721. Harley's government agreed to the Treaty of Utrecht with France in 1713, bringing an end to twelve years of British involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1714 he fell from favour following the accession of the first monarch of the House of Hanover, George I and was for a time imprisoned in the Tower of London by his political enemies. He was also a noted literary figure and served as a patron of both the October Club and the Scriblerus Club. Harley Street is sometimes said to be named after him, although it was his son Edward Harley who actually developed the area. ==Early life: 1661–1688== Harley was born in Bow Street, London, in 1661, the eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, a prominent landowner in Herefordshire and his wife Abigail Stephens and the grandson of Sir Robert Harley and his third wife, the celebrated letter-writer Brilliana, Lady Harley. He was educated at Shilton, near Burford, in Oxfordshire, in a small school which produced at the same time a Lord High Treasurer (Harley himself), a Lord High Chancellor (Lord Harcourt) and a Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (Lord Trevor). Harley then spent some time at Foubert's Academy, but disliked it. He entered the Inner Temple on 18 March 1682, but was never called to the bar. The principles of Whiggism and Nonconformism were taught him at an early age, and he never formally abandoned his family's religious opinions, although he departed from them in politics. His father was wrongly imprisoned for suspected support for the Monmouth rebellion in 1685 and Harley wrote that "we are not a little rejoiced" at Monmouth's defeat.〔Hill, p. 10.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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