William Cavendish, 4th duke of Devonshire, served as prime minister for only 225 days, making his the fifth shortest tenure of the office. As heir to one of the greatest Whig dynasties in the realm, Cavendish, known as marquess of Hartington from 1729, seemed destined for high government office. His great-grandfather had been one of the ‘Immortal Seven’ who invited William of Orange to invade England in 1688 and since then the family had dedicated themselves to preserving the Revolution political settlement.

In 1741 Hartington was returned to the Commons as a Member for Derbyshire, and worked strenuously on behalf of Sir Robert Walpole during his last days as premier in 1741-2. Hartington likewise supported the successive Whig ministries of the Pelham brothers, Henry and Thomas, duke of Newcastle. Already immensely wealthy through the Cavendish estates in Derbyshire, centred on Chatsworth, Hartington in 1748 married Charlotte, the only daughter and sole heir of Richard Boyle, 3rd earl of Burlington, who brought with her Boyle properties in Yorkshire (Bolton Abbey), Ireland (Lismore Castle) and London (Burlington House and Chiswick House).

Alongside his great wealth, Hartington was admired for his probity and manners. James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave, felt that Hartington ‘had all the good qualities of his father, and seemed less averse to business’ [Waldegrave Memoirs and Speeches, 186]. Even the cynical Horace Walpole quipped that Cavendish father and son were ‘the fashionable models of goodness’. In June 1751 Hartington sat in the House of Lords under a writ of acceleration as Lord Cavendish of Hardwicke, before eventually succeeding to his father’s dukedom on 5 Dec. 1755. In April of that year he had also followed his father as lord lieutenant of Ireland, where his tactful diplomacy helped to conciliate the competing factions in Irish politics.

Devonshire’s services as the ‘crown prince of the Whigs’, as one contemporary dubbed him, were called on at a time of crisis. In May 1756 Britain declared war against France in what became the Seven Years’ War. The first months went disastrously for Britain, and the most damaging blow was the French conquest of Minorca in June. Newcastle, the prime minister, was pilloried for his incompetence, most particularly by the fiery Commons orator William Pitt the elder, who promised a torrid time for the ministry when parliament was set to resume in the autumn. Unwilling to face a hostile parliament and feeling unsupported by Newcastle, the ministry’s leader in the Commons Henry Fox resigned as secretary of state in October. His obvious replacement was Pitt, but he refused to work with Newcastle, who in turn resigned in November over the impasse. The government had collapsed and was leaderless just at the lowest point in a major global war.

George II turned to Devonshire after Pitt made it clear that the duke was one of the few people he felt he could work with. Reluctantly Devonshire, called back from Ireland, formed a government, which was ready by mid-November 1756. He saw it merely as a stopgap government, and insisted to the king that his tenure was only to last until the end of the parliamentary session. He became prime minister out of a sense of duty, not ambition. George II readily acknowledged that ‘The Duke of Devonshire has acted by me in the handsomest manner, and is in a very disagreeable situation entirely on my account’. [Waldegrave Memoirs and Speeches, 193]. Pitt was made secretary of state for the southern department, which gave him a place in the cabinet and a forum to make policy. Devonshire thus served as a unifying noble figurehead in a wartime government whose main driver was Pitt.

Pitt, however, still had to deal with the animosity of the royal family, which had never appreciated his anti-Hanoverian diatribes. In April 1757 the king’s son the duke of Cumberland insisted on Pitt’s removal before he would take command of the British forces in Germany. The king was only too happy to comply, and the government collapsed again, for the second time in five months. Over the following fraught weeks Fox, Devonshire, Newcastle, and Earl Waldegrave were all called on to form a workable government. None succeeded. Eventually, in June Philip Yorke, earl of Hardwicke, brought Pitt and Newcastle together and somehow forged an agreement whereby they could work together in government. In early July Newcastle returned to office, replacing Devonshire as first lord of the Treasury, with Pitt retaining his place as secretary of state. Devonshire did not vanish from politics after stepping aside. He was made lord chamberlain and continued to sit in cabinet, even though he did not hold a cabinet-level office. He continued in post until November 1762 when the new king George III dismissed him after Devonshire refused to attend a privy council meeting in protest against the king’s proposed peace terms with France.

As short as it may have been, Devonshire’s term in office was not a failure and he achieved everything which he felt he had been asked to do. He had stabilized a leaderless government, and was conciliatory enough that even the demanding Pitt could work with him. Devonshire’s premiership provided a platform to bring Pitt off the backbenches, where he was used to sniping at the government, and into cabinet so that he could direct the war he felt he alone could win. Then, after having helped to bring the bitter rivals Pitt and Newcastle together, Devonshire was happy to step aside. Despite such painful beginnings, the Pitt-Newcastle administration that emerged from these negotiations has become renowned in British history, as it led the country to victory and unprecedented territorial expansion in the Seven Years’ War. Devonshire was, in effect, the ideal caretaker prime minister, as he kept the government intact and functioning until this more effective, and bellicose, ministry could be formed.

CGDL

Suggested reading:

William Cavendish, fourth duke of Devonshire, Memoranda on State of Affairs, 1759-1762, ed. Peter d. Brown and Karl W. Schweizer (Camden Society 4th Series, vol. 27, 1982).

The memoirs and speeches of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave 1742-1763, ed. J. C. D. Clark (1988), pp. 146-211.

John Pearson, Stags and Serpents: A History of the Cavendish family and the Dukes of Devonshire (2002), pp. 109-20.

Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, earl of Chatham (1976).

Read about another Prime Minister to serve for only a short period of time, the 2nd earl of Shelburne, in this blog.

Between 5 and 7 July 2022, over 60 members of Boris Johnson’s government resigned, the highest number of resignations in a limited period in British political history. Few 18th-century governments saw as many departures, but many of the period’s administrations were formed following concerted ministerial resignations. Those resigning in 2022 aimed to topple their own prime minister and bring about a new government. Under the Georgians, it was usually the prime minister himself, and leading ministers, who resigned in order to force the king to choose between equally unpalatable ministers, often against his will.

George II in particular had strong opinions about his ministers. He preferred John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, a German-speaker advocate of a pro-Hanoverian policy. However, the king had been forced to agree to Granville’s departure as secretary of state in November 1744 after receiving what was in effect an ultimatum from Henry Pelham, first lord of the Treasury and effectively prime minister, and his elder brother, Thomas Pelham Holles, duke of Newcastle, the other secretary of state.

The king nevertheless continued to take advice from Granville who, against the wishes of the Pelhams, dissuaded George from taking the incendiary anti-Hanover orator, William Pitt the Elder, into government. The Pelhams, fearing that they too would be dismissed, engaged in a game of brinkmanship with the king. On 10 February 1746 they and the leading ministers in the government all resigned, followed by several more junior ministers, ‘down to the lowest clerks’. ‘The whole nation, which for four years had seemed possessed with a madness of seizing places, now ran into the opposite frenzy of quitting them’. [Horace Walpole, Memoirs of George II, i. 171-2] In the space of a few days in February 1746, somewhere in the region of 45 government ministers resigned, dismantling the government while the country was still threatened by the Jacobite rebels.

At first, George II turned to Granville and William Pulteney, earl of Bath, to form a new ministry. Over two days they struggled to form a government but got no further than choosing four ministers (including themselves). On the third day of this ‘meteor-like ministry’, with ‘no volunteers coming in’, Bath and Granville conceded defeat. The victorious Pelhamites laid further strict conditions on the king as they returned to office. Pitt was brought into the government, but as paymaster general rather that secretary at war. They also insisted that the king could only work with his official ministers and should discard non-ministerial advisers.

Ten years later George II was again forced to accept ministers he disliked. Henry Pelham died in March 1754 and was replaced by his brother Newcastle as first lord of the Treasury. Britain’s renewed war with France in 1755-6 started badly, culminating in the humiliating loss of Minorca in 1756. As a hostile parliamentary session approached in the autumn of 1756, Henry Fox, the government’s leader of the Commons, felt unsupported by Newcastle. In order to shore up his position, Fox tendered his resignation just before the session was set to commence. This time the ploy did not work. The king accepted Fox’s resignation and then turned reluctantly to Newcastle to form a ministry that would incorporate Pitt instead. ‘The Great Commoner’, though, refused to serve with Newcastle, prompting Newcastle in turn to tender his resignation. This time, apart from his friend the lord chancellor Philip Yorke, earl of Hardwicke, Newcastle could not persuade any more of his colleagues to resign with him. Eventually in early November William Cavendish, 4th duke of Devonshire, agreed to head a new government, with Pitt as secretary of state.

The way seemed clear, however, for Newcastle’s quick return to office as Pitt found it difficult to work with Devonshire’s cadre of loyal Whigs in the Commons. Most of all the king remained hostile towards Pitt and dismissed him from office in early April 1757. This time it took much longer to from a new administration. Fox tried first but, following his failure, over the summer a number of emissaries, most often Hardwicke, tried to negotiate with all the mutually antagonistic parties.

Eventually the king turned to James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave. Like the previous Bath-Granville government, Waldegrave’s was short-lived – only four days – before Newcastle threw in his trump card. Either independently or at Newcastle’s request, Robert Darcy, 4th earl of Holdernesse, secretary of state for the northern department, resigned. Significantly, Holdernesse tendered his resignation on 9 June, the day after Waldegrave was tasked with forming his ministry. Newcastle denied to Waldegrave that he had had any influence in Holdernesse’s departure, but at the same time seemed to threaten Waldegrave that ‘with a single Word, he could cause so many Resignations, as would give the Court a very empty appearance’. [Waldegrave, Memoirs, 203] Waldegrave also suspected that Newcastle was working behind his back, dissuading others from taking up the posts he offered them in his government.

Faced with a diminishing pool of candidates from which to fill places, Waldegrave gave up and the king was again forced to turn to Newcastle to build a working administration. It took several more weeks before Pitt and Newcastle, with Hardwicke acting as intermediary, could reach a modus vivendi. The new ministry was not confirmed until early July 1757, three months after Pitt’s dismissal, which had started the crisis of the ‘interministerium’ as Walpole dubbed it. Newcastle had ‘forced’ his way into office again, and brought with him Pitt, by his skilful use of the well-timed resignation.

From such inauspicious beginnings emerged the ministry of 1757-61, which is now considered one of the more successful among British governments. It oversaw Britain’s victory in the Seven Years War, which established the foundations for the first British empire in North America, and provided the basis for Britain’s global ambitions and conduct for decades to come.

CGDL

Further Reading:

Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 3 vols., ed. Lord Holland (1847)
The memoirs & speeches of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave 1742-1763, ed. J.C.D. Clark (1988)
Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, 3 vols, ed. Philip C. Yorke (1913)