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Clyve Jones
The excise crisis of 1733 was the first major parliamentary crisis Sir Robert Walpole's ministry faced in the house of commons. As a result of the huge public outcry, the proposal was dropped in the Commons, but the opposition to it in the house of lords was so great that the opposition lords switched their attack in 1734 to the accounts of the South Sea Company, and the ministry lost a crucial division in the Lords (the first such loss by any ministry for a generation). Walpole, with the king's approval, tried to discipline the members of the upper chamber by sacking some erstwhile supporters from their offices and the colonelcy of their regiments (the latter of which was considered by many to be an attack on property). This attempt to gain control alienated a further batch of lords who continued their opposition in the Lords well into 1735, particularly over the Scots' petition in that year against the ministry's conduct of the election of the Scottish representative peers in the summer of 1734. Some of the disciplined peers returned to the ministerial fold, but a number continued their opposition, some for the rest of the life of Walpole's ministry. The 1734-5 crisis in the Lords, which initially arose over the excise proposals, continued, largely fuelled by Walpole's treatment of some of the ministry's former supporters, and, in fact, can be considered a second separate crisis triggered by Walpole's treatment of the peerage.
