Halifax, Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of 1661-1715
English statesman and poet

He was born in Horton, Northamptonshire, and educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. As a poet his most notable achievement was the parody of Dryden's The Hind and the Panther, entitled The Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse (1687), jointly written with Matthew Prior. As a lord of the Treasury in 1692 he established the National Debt with a loan of �1 million sterling. In 1694 he originated the Bank of England, as proposed by William Paterson three years earlier, and was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. His friend Isaac Newton became Warden of the Mint, and Halifax raised a tax on windows to pay for the recoinage in 1695; he first introduced Exchequer bills. In 1697 he became Prime Minister, but he was unpopular, and when the Tories came into power in 1699 he retired from the Commons to the Exchequer. He was unsuccessfully impeached in 1701, and again in 1703. He strongly supported the union with Scotland and the Hanoverian succession. On Queen Anne's death he was appointed a member of the Council of Regency, and on George I's arrival he became an earl and First Lord of the Treasury. His uncle was the Parliamentary general, the Earl of Manchester.