At the beginning of 1775, pretty much every British politician agreed that something needed to be done about America, with many eager to find a way to reconcile both parties [Bradley, 19-20]. What they could not agree on, was how. Since the ending of the Seven Years War in 1763, relations between Britain and the American colonies had been difficult. In the aftermath of the war, there were large numbers of troops stationed in America, which annoyed many colonists, who viewed the presence of a standing army as a threat to their liberties. Matters became worse when George Grenville’s administration imposed the 1764 sugar duty and 1765 Stamp Act as a way of helping to pay for the colonies’ defence. In the aftermath of the latter, nine colonies convened the ‘Anti-Stamp Act Congress’ to condemn the ‘manifest tendency to subvert’ their rights and liberties. [Duffy]

Repeal of the acts by the Rockingham administration in 1766 went some way towards resetting relations, but it was to prove a very brief lull. The Townshend duties of 1767 ramped up tensions once more and in March 1770 matters boiled over with the Boston Massacre. Three years later, in response to Britain granting the East India Company a monopoly on supplying tea to the colonies, a group of patriots in disguise boarded several ships in the harbour at Boston and dumped their cargo of tea into the water, in the so-called Boston Tea Party. This in turn led to more punitive action from Britain with the ‘Coercive’ or ‘Intolerable’ acts, which were aimed at punishing the state of Massachusetts for its involvement.

It was in this context, that on 1 February 1775, William Pitt the Elder, now in the Lords as earl of Chatham, rose to his feet to propose a Provisional Act for settling relations with America. Throughout the ongoing crisis Chatham and his followers maintained a consistent approach, sitting in between the government of Lord North, and the opposition Whig grouping led by the marquess of Rockingham, by arguing for a middle way in approaching the problem. America should remain a colony of Britain, it was contended, but its concerns should be addressed and concessions offered to help stabilize relations.

Chatham’s speech on 1 February, set out in detail his plans for how this might be achieved. He hoped that ‘true reconcilement’ would ‘avert impending calamities’ and the accord ‘stand an everlasting monument of clemency and magnanimity in the benignant father of his people’. In answer to those who thought he was offering the colonies too much by way of concession, he insisted it was ‘a bill of assertion’, stating clearly an ongoing relationship between mother country and colonies, in which Parliament would retain supremacy.

Well-known for his fiery (and often very lengthy) harangues, Chatham had couched his speech in terms of moderation and compromise, but after the proposed bill was laid on the table an immediate intervention by the earl of Sandwich ‘instantly changed this appearance of concession on the part of the administration’. Sandwich objected that the Americans had already committed acts of rebellion and turned on Chatham for introducing a measure which ‘was no less unparliamentary than unprecedented’.

Over the course of a debate that engrossed the Lords until almost ten o’clock at night and featured at least eleven lengthy speeches, the honours appeared relatively evenly matched. Speaking in support of Chatham was the gaunt figure of Lord Lyttelton, who praised him for his extensive knowledge and his good intentions and who, although not agreeing with everything Chatham was proposing, argued that his effort deserved a much kinder reception than Sandwich had given it. Lyttelton was then followed by an ‘extremely animated’ Lord Shelburne, one of Chatham’s principal acolytes, who feared that the interruption of supplies of corn that was one result of the collapse in relations between Britain and America, would lead to widespread rioting. He concluded with a start warning:

Think, then, in time; Ireland naked and defenceless, England in an uproar from one end to the other for want of bread, and destitute of employment.

Not all of Chatham’s erstwhile colleagues were so supportive. The duke of Grafton, who had served with Chatham when prime minister and succeeded him in the office, complained about the ‘very unparliamentary manner in which the noble earl had hurried the bill into the House’. He also found fault with Chatham lumping so many different themes together within the one bill. They ought, he felt, to have been treated separately. His intervention later attracted a rebuke from Chatham, who was amused at being accused of rushing the bill into Parliament, when the crisis called for swift action, which he argued the government was incapable of doing.

After Sandwich, probably the fiercest critic of Chatham’s propositions from the government side came from Earl Gower, who was said to have risen to his feet ‘in a great heat, and condemned the bill in the warmest terms’. He was particularly irritated by what he perceived as Chatham’s decision to sanction the ‘traitorous proceedings of the [American] congress already held’ but also his suggestion that it be legalized ‘by ordaining that another shall be held on the 9th of May next’. When Chatham rose to answer Gower’s criticisms, Gower could not stop himself from making further interventions as the atmosphere in the Lords collapsed into general name-calling. Chatham’s final contribution to the day’s mud-slinging was to accuse the ministry’s conduct over the past few years of demonstrating:

one continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious servility, incapacity, and corruption…

The final contributions of the day were attempts at moderation by the duke of Manchester and Chatham’s cousin, Earl Temple. Manchester feared that a civil war would end in the destruction of the empire, as had happened in the case of Rome and wished only ‘that one sober view should be taken of the great question, before perhaps we blindly rushed into a scene of confusion and civil strife’. Temple, meanwhile, pointed the finger of blame for the current problems at the repeal of the Stamp Act, but most of all appealed to the Lords not to reject out of hand Chatham’s propositions, which he believed were thoroughly well intentioned.

In spite of Temple’s last minute effort to persuade his colleagues to grant time to Chatham’s ideas, when the House divided the government secured a sizeable majority, voting to reject the bill by 68 to 32. A few days later, on 9 February, Massachusetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion. It was, of course, just the beginning of an affair that would ultimately result in all-out war a few months later.

RDEE

Further Reading:

James E. Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England (1986)

Cobbett, Parliamentary History xviii (1774-1777)

Michael Duffy, ‘Contested Empires, 1756-1815’ in Paul Langford, ed. The Eighteenth Century (2002)

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)

January 1766 ought in many ways to have been a moment of particular optimism for George III and his government. On New Year’s day, the Old Pretender (James Francis Edward Stuart) died and as no Catholic leader of any weight chose to recognize his heir, Charles Edward (Bonnie Prince Charlie) as ‘Charles III’ of England, the demise of the Pretender effectively brought to a close a chapter in the struggle between the Hanoverians and Stuarts for legitimacy. However, if matters had been settled neatly in the old world, pressures were mounting in the new.

In the early months of 1766, following pressure from both the American colonies and British merchants, the administration of the marquess of Rockingham presided over the repeal of the Stamp Act, which had been introduced only a year before under the previous administration headed by George Grenville. The duty, raised as part of an effort to recoup the huge expenditure of the Seven Years War (1756-63), which according to some estimates amounted to as much as £70 million, extended the principle of paying duty on certain products already familiar in Britain to the colonies. Thus the law required a stamp to be paid for certain items including licences for retailing wine (£4), for retailing wine and spirits (£3), letters of probate (10 shillings) and for each pack of playing cards (1 shilling). In addition, the stamp had to be paid for in British rather than colonial currency. It proved extremely unpopular in America, provoking riots in a number of places. It was also resented by some British merchants who feared loss of income as a result of American traders boycotting British goods.

Grenville’s decision to turn to the colonies had been prompted largely by the unpopularity of the 1763 Cider Tax but it can be argued that there was also a philosophical angle to the move. As Grenville was later to insist ‘Protection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience.’ [cited in B. Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat, 536]. By insisting that the American colonists pay their share towards the upkeep of British troops, Grenville hoped to help defray the costs of the war without imposing further on the over-taxed and war-weary British population; but he also wished to emphasize the changing nature of the relationship between Britain and its developing empire.

As just one of a number of measures levied around the same time, the Stamp Act passed with little comment at Westminster, but unfortunately for Grenville, the Americans proved far less easy to convince and were quick to object to the new imposition. Why should they be taxed to maintain an army that they did not believe played any role in protecting them, and (perhaps more importantly) without having been properly consulted about the measure? The levy gave rise to the well-known slogan of ‘no taxation without representation’, harking back to one of the most famous tenets of Magna Carta, that no taxation might be raised without the consent of the monarch’s tenants in chief. For the Americans, that meant that property-holders in the states ought to have had a say in agreeing to such a new tax. The Virginia Assembly meeting in May 1765 was the first to condemn it and a meeting of freeholders in Boston in September 1765 (following on from rioting of the previous month) reflected similar views by dubbing the measure ‘very grievous, and we apprehend unconstitutional’. In October the ‘Stamp Act Congress’ convened in New York, at which representatives of many of the ’13 Colonies’ gathered to express their dissatisfaction with the Stamp Act and other levies.

Not all of the colonies chose to oppose the measure. Newspapers reported that Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and the Grenadines, as well as Halifax in Canada had acceded to the tax. However, by the beginning of 1766 the Rockingham ministry, which had replaced Grenville’s in July 1765, had resolved on repealing the Stamp Act. The ministry’s stance was attacked by ‘the King’s Friends’ headed by the former prime minister, the earl of Bute, but attracted high profile support from William Pitt the Elder, who proved a particularly vocal advocate of repeal in the House of Commons (overcoming indisposition with gout to attend the session). Pitt also assisted the ministry in finding a way of saving face. The Stamp Act was to be repealed but at the same time a Declaratory Act would be put on the statute books, confirming the right of the ministry to tax the colonists where appropriate (for more on this watch this space in March).

Unsurprisingly, not everyone agreed with the ministry’s handling of the crisis. Grenville voiced his opposition to the scheme and his views were echoed in a letter to the London Chronicle of 4-6 February 1766 by Rev. James Scott (a noted supporter of the Stamp Act who wrote under the pen-name ‘Anti-Sejanus’), attacking the ministry but in particular the role of Pitt in arriving at what he saw as the present unhappy compromise:

The plan which the M—y now intend to pursue, is, if possible, ten times more absurd and ridiculous, than that on which they originally set out. It carries with it a flat contradiction in terms, and implies an absolute impossibility. Attend and marvel O indignant reader! They propose to repeal the Act, and yet to enforce the power of parliament over the colonies. Now light and darkness, fire and water, are not more diametrically opposite and repugnant, than these two propositions.

‘Absurd’ or ‘repugnant’ they may have been, but following careful management and a noteworthy debut in Parliament by the newly-elected Edmund Burke, in February the ministry carried it for repeal and the following month both repeal of the Stamp Act and the passage of the Declaratory Act received the royal assent.

RDEE

We’ll return to this subject later this year with more on the Declaratory Act – watch this space!

Further Reading:

• Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody: a thematic biography of Edmund Burke (1992)
• Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1783 (1989)

Tomorrow former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s funeral will take place at St Paul’s Cathedral. Public funerals for Prime Ministers have been fairly rare in recent years, but Baroness Thatcher is by no means alone in receiving this honour from the state.

The first Prime Minister to have a public funeral was William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778). The Commons agreed unanimously that the funeral should take place in Westminster Abbey, despite some calls for him to be buried in St Paul’s, and the cost covered by the public. Pitt lay in state for two days at Westminster and thousands came to pay their respects. His son, William Pitt the Younger, was honoured in the same way; after his sudden death in 1806 he too lay in state before being buried with his family in Westminster Abbey. In addition to the cost of the funeral itself, the public purse also covered his debts, which came to £40,000.

Westminster Abbey was also the venue for George Canning’s funeral in 1827, again attended by huge crowds, and for that of Lord Palmerston, who died from pneumonia in 1865.  You can view an image of his hearse leaving Brockett Hall on the St Albans museums website and read a full account of his funeral from the Brisbane Courier. The four-time Prime Minister William Gladstone, who died from cancer on 19 May 1898, was also buried in Westminster Abbey after three days of lying in state; simultaneous services were held across the Empire and world to mark his death. (For a full account of his funeral, see this article from H.C.G. Matthew).

Some of the largest state funerals were reserved for Prime Ministers who were also war leaders, such as Winston Churchill (1965) and the Duke of Wellington (1852). Both lay in state for several days, Churchill in Westminster Hall and Wellington at Walmer Castle and Chelsea Hospital, and millions turned out to pay their respects to both men. Wellington’s funeral was considered ‘probably the most ornate and spectacular funeral ever seen in England’, and he was buried at St Paul’s (for a longer account of Wellington’s ceremony and several images, see this article on the Victorian Web). After his state funeral, Churchill was buried in a private family service in the village of Bladon.

Other twentieth-century Prime Ministers honoured with a public funeral include Henry Campbell Bannerman, who died in 10 Downing Street in 1908. He received generous tributes in the House (you can read these in Hansard) , an ‘impressive’ service at Westminster Abbey and, again, crowds of mourners paying their respects before he was buried in Meigle churchyard. Parliament honoured his memory with a memorial in Westminster Abbey. Andrew Bonar Law, who died in 1923 after a short period as Prime Minister, was given a service in Westminster Abbey against his wishes (he had wanted to be buried with his wife in Helensburgh). This was not an uncontroversial move, as his old enemy Herbert Asquith was said to remark ‘we have buried the Unknown Prime Minister by the side of the Unknown Soldier.’

Finally, the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, was given a public funeral in Westminster Abbey after he died at sea in November 1937. Although his family were offered a place in the Abbey for his interment, his ashes were taken to Scotland and buried with the body of his wife. A memorial now stands in Westminster Abbey.

EP

All quotations thanks to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and thanks to Dr Paul Seaward and Dr Kathryn Rix for links and suggestions.