Editing Horace Walpole (section)

==Later parliamentary career: 1754–1768==
[[File:Horace Walpole by John Giles Eccardt.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Horace Walpole by [[John Giles Eccardt]], {{circa|1755}}.]]

In the House of Commons, Walpole represented one of the many [[rotten borough]]s, [[Castle Rising (UK Parliament constituency)|Castle Rising]], which consisted of underlying freeholds in four villages near [[Kings Lynn]], Norfolk, from 1754 until 1757. At his home, he hung a copy of the warrant for the execution of King [[Charles I of England|Charles I]] with the inscription "Major Charta" and wrote of "the least bad of all murders, that of a King".{{sfn|Ketton-Cremer|1964|pp=126–127}} In 1756 he wrote:
{{blockquote|I am sensible that from the prostitution of patriotism, from the art of ministers who have had the address to exalt the semblance while they depressed the reality of royalty, and from the bent of the education of the young nobility, which verges to French maxims and to a military spirit, nay, from the ascendant which the nobility itself acquires each day in this country, from all these reflections, I am sensible, that prerogative and power have been exceedingly fortified of late within the circle of the palace; and though fluctuating ministers by turns exercise the deposit, yet there it is; and whenever a prince of design and spirit shall sit in the regal chair, he will find a bank, a hoard of power, which he may lay off most fatally against this constitution. [I am] a quiet republican, who does not dislike to see the shadow of monarchy, like [[Banquo]]'s ghost, fill the empty chair of state, that the ambitious, the murderer, the tyrant, may not aspire to it; in short, who approves the name of a King, when it excludes the essence.|
source={{harvnb|Ketton-Cremer|1964|p=127}} }}

Walpole worried that while his fellow Whigs fought amongst themselves, the [[Tories (British political party)|Tories]] were gaining power, the result of which would be England delivered to an unlimited, absolute monarchy, "that authority, that torrent which I should in vain extend a feeble arm to stem".{{sfn|Ketton-Cremer|1964|p=127}}

In 1757, he wrote the anonymous pamphlet ''A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking'', the first of his works to be widely reviewed.{{sfn|Sabor|2013|p=4}}

In early 1757, old Horace Walpole of Wolterton died and was succeeded in the peerage by his son, who was then an MP for [[King's Lynn (UK Parliament constituency)|King's Lynn]], thereby creating a vacancy. The electors of King's Lynn did not wish to be represented by a stranger and instead wanted someone with a connection to the Walpole family. The new Lord Walpole, therefore, wrote to his cousin requesting that he stand for the seat, saying his friends "were all unanimously of opinion that you were the only person who from your near affinity to my grandfather, whose name is still in the greatest veneration, and your own known personal abilities and qualifications, could stand in the gap on this occasion and prevent opposition and expense and perhaps disgrace to the family".{{sfn|Ketton-Cremer|1964|p= 200}}

In early 1757, Walpole was out of Parliament after vacating Castle Rising until his election that year to King's Lynn, a seat he would hold until his retirement from the Commons in 1768.{{sfn|Ketton-Cremer|1964|p=201}}

Walpole became a prominent opponent of the 1757 decision to execute Admiral [[John Byng]].{{sfn|Ketton-Cremer|1964|p=201}}