On Monday 20 July 1789, Henry Beaufoy, MP for Great Yarmouth, moved the third reading of a bill he had sponsored through the House of Commons for instituting a perpetual commemoration of the 1688 Revolution. The bill was a relatively simple one, seeking merely to insist that in December every year, clergy in the Church of England would read out the Bill of Rights, thereby reminding their congregations of the events that had seen James II expelled and William III and Mary II installed as monarchs.

Beaufoy’s bill had to compete with other rather more urgent measures. These included one for continuing an Act passed in the previous session for regulating the shipping of enslaved people in British ships from the coast of Africa; and another for granting over £20,000 towards defraying the costs of the Warren Hastings trial, which had commenced the previous year and would continue to annoy the House until 1795. Consequently, it was late in the day when Beaufoy got to his feet and, although his motion carried by 23 votes to 14, it was determined that as the House now lacked the requisite 40 members present to make a quorum, the Commons should adjourn.

Next day, Beaufoy tried again. Once more, there was opposition. During the two days when the bill was debated objections were raised by Sir William Dolben and Sir Joseph Mawbey, the latter arguing that Beaufoy was merely mimicking the Whig Club in seeking popularity, while Henry James Pye considered the measure ridiculous as it would result in two commemorative events each year. Others were warmly in favour, though and, when it came to a division, the motion to give the bill a third reading was carried. Following a failed effort by Mawbey to introduce an amendment granting to each clergyman required to read the declaration 20 shillings, the bill was passed and sent up to the Lords. [Commons Journal, xliv. 543-7]

Beaufoy’s bill had its origins in the centenary celebrations of the Revolution, which had been marked across the country the previous autumn. Like his bill, not everything had proceeded smoothly. Not least, there were obvious rivalries between the clubs and societies heading up the various events. There was even disagreement on precisely when to mark the day. The Revolution Society had chosen 4 November, on the basis that this was both William III’s birthday (and wedding anniversary) and the day that he had made landfall. The Constitution Club, on the other hand, chose to hold its entertainment on 5 November, which chimed with the date chosen by John Tillotson (soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury), when preaching his 1689 commemorative sermon. It also echoed celebrations of the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot and this dinner was rounded off with toasts to the ‘three eights’: 1588 (Armada), 1688 and 1788. [Gazetteer and Daily Advertiser, 6 November 1788]

Aside from somewhat petty disagreements about whether 4 or 5 November was most apt, several of the societies also had strikingly different political outlooks and exhibited fierce rivalry. Speaking at the Whig Club, Richard Sheridan concluded his remarks with proposing a subscription for erecting a monument to the Revolution, which appeared to get off to a fine start with £500 being pledged almost at once. The plan was for the edifice to be located at Runnymede, emphasizing the links between the safeguarding of English liberty with Magna Carta, and the completion of the process with William of Orange’s successful invasion.

Not everyone liked the idea of a physical monument, though, and when the proposal was read out at other clubs, it received either muted or downright hostile responses. Speaking at the Constitution Club’s dinner at Willis’ Rooms, presided over by Lord Hood and featuring around 700 diners, John Horne Tooke made no secret of his contempt for the Whig Club’s plan. It was at this meeting that Beaufoy first raised his idea for a day of commemoration to be legislated for by Parliament, though at least one paper reported that his speech had been drowned out by the noise around him.

Elsewhere, there was more harmony. One of the grandest celebrations of 1688 took part at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, where Thomas Coke (future Earl of Leicester) laid on a spectacular firework display as well as mounting a recreation of William’s landing at Brixham having brought in squadrons of horses and loaded them onto miniature ships, which were launched on a canal. Perhaps the most evocative event, though, was one of many held in London taverns, where an unidentified man, said to be 112 years old, was reported to have been in attendance and chaired by the company. According to the paper he was one of ten centurions residing in the French hospital on Old Street, but at 112 he was likely the only one of them who actually remembered the Revolution taking place. [E. Johnson’s British Gazette and Sunday Monitor, 9 November 1788]

All of this was cast thoroughly into the shade by the very unhelpful timing of the king’s illness, which had commenced that summer but become steadily more acute through October and finally reached a crisis on the symbolic date of 5 November. The Prince of Wales had been on his way to Holkham to take part in Coke’s celebrations, but was forced to turn back after being alerted to the king’s deteriorating condition. At a time when the stalwarts of the Revolution Settlement were trying to make the case for the stability it had provided in settling the throne on the House of Brunswick, the prospect of a king no longer able to fulfil his constitutional functions was a disaster.

By the time Beaufoy finally made his motion in the Commons, the king had recovered but that did not ease the progress of what always seems to have been a rather unwanted bill. Having made its way through the Commons, the measure was presented to a thinly attended House of Lords on Thursday 23 July 1789, and a motion for the bill to be given a first reading was moved by Earl Stanhope – a leading member of the Revolution Society.

Stanhope’s motion was objected to by the Bishop of Bangor, who insisted that a prayer was already said for the Revolution in church each year. Stanhope attempted to argue in favour of the ‘pious and political expediency’ of the bill, insisting that the event was not commemorated satisfactorily in church. [Oracle, 24 July] The Lord Chancellor left the wool sack to enable him to offer his own opinions on the matter, backing up Bangor’s view and arguing the bill to be absurd, before a final contribution was made in favour of the proposed measure by the Earl of Hopetoun. The motion for the first reading was then negatived by six votes to 13, after which the Lords resolved without more ado to throw the unwanted bill out. [Diary or Woodfall’s Register, 24 July; The World, 24 July] Sheridan’s wish for a grand monument met with a similar fate, though an obelisk celebrating the centenary was raised at Kirkley Hall near Ponteland in Northumberland, by Newton Ogle, Dean of Winchester, and another at Castle Howe near Kendal in Cumbria.

As far as commemoration of 1688 was concerned this was far from the end of the story. Two centuries on, the tercentenary witnessed an unusual expression of unity from the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock. Moving a humble address to the Queen, expressing the House’s ‘great pleasure in celebrating the tercentenary of these historic events of 1688 and 1689 that established those constitutional freedoms under the law which Your Majesty’s Parliament and people have continued to enjoy for three hundred years’, Thatcher was answered by Kinnock, agreeing that it was: ‘a worthy act, not only because it celebrates a significant advance, as the Prime Minister just said, but because it requires us all to consider the character of our democracy…’

Father of the House, Sir Bernard Braine, was next to speak. He welcomed the rare moment of political harmony and underlined the key principal about what 1688 meant to everyone in the chamber:

‘It is the knowledge that the parliamentary system which we jointly serve is greater than the sum total of all who are here at any one time.’

RDEE

Further Reading:

John Brooke, King George III (1972)

Journals of the House of Commons

Journals of the House of Lords

On 10 February 1793, 21 Members of the Commons gathered at 106 Pall Mall. Over 50 had been expected only for the invitations to be sent out late. The attendees were mainly conservative Foxite Whigs, and all were horrified by events in France and the stance of Charles James Fox. They resolved to secede and form a ‘Third Party’ while providing qualified support for William Pitt’s Ministry. This secession, which augured the disintegration of the Foxites and the formation of the Pitt-Portland coalition, was pursued with considerable hesitation.

The anguished path towards secession was illustrated well in the man reluctantly acclaimed as leader, William Windham (1750-1810).

The scion of an old Norfolk family, Windham began his political career in 1778 with a well-received address opposing the American War. After a brief, difficult tenure as Chief Secretary for Ireland, he was returned as one of the Members for Norwich in 1784. Windham slowly grew into his role as a parliamentarian, occasionally crippled by anxiety and hypochondria, and first achieving note as one of the managers of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Initially moderately liberal, Windham became increasingly conservative by the early 1790s, influenced by his close friend Edmund Burke.

Like many in the political nation, Windham was initially sympathetic to the French Revolution, visiting Paris in August 1789 and writing approvingly of the situation to Burke. Fox’s nephew, Lord Holland, thought him a ‘warm admirer’ of the Revolution. Windham was among a group of British visitors to Paris in August 1791 observing the formal ratification of the new Constitution, where the treatment of Louis XVI horrified him. Windham had come to France, as Lord Auckland recorded, ‘a great admirer’ of the Revolution and returned increasingly alarmed.

The schism of his close friends Burke and Fox over the Revolution by May 1791 anguished Windham profoundly. Like other conservative Foxites, he agreed privately with Burke, but was deeply reluctant to split from Fox and the Whigs’ de jure leader, the respected but indecisive conservative 3rd duke of Portland. By 1792 Windham was increasingly prominent as an anti-Jacobin, fostering social links with French royalist émigrés and supporting anti-sedition measures at home. Still, he was resistant to give way to secession, wishing that the Foxites ‘should act as cordially together as if no such difference had ever occurred’.

The increasing violence of the Revolution by 1792 and Fox’s continued sympathies eventually convinced conservative Foxites they could not sway Fox towards their position. With Portland more interested in avoiding a split, conservative Foxites looked increasingly to Windham for political direction. Fellow conservative Sir Gilbert Elliot opined in December that with Portland’s ‘indecision’, conservatives looked to Windham, who ‘stands higher at present, both in the House and in the country, than any man I remember’.

The execution of Louis XVI and the outbreak of war by early February 1793 finally provoked the secession with the aforementioned meeting of 10 February followed by another a week later. ‘The meeting has a good effect’, wrote Elliot:

It must show the Duke of Portland that we are determined to take our own line even without him; and it has pledged Windham more distinctly than he was before to a separation from Fox.

Despite this the ‘Third Party’ hoped to convince Portland to split from Fox and take ‘his natural place as our leader’. The seceders were thus forced into a curious situation of defecting from a faction whose nominal leader they still pined for. Their resolve was, however, demonstrated further with the secession of 45 men from the Whig Club in late February 1793.

Windham initially hoped for around 86 defectors, yet the number settled ultimately to 38, of which at most 28 were ex-Foxites. Of the 45 Whig Club seceders, 18 were MPs and only ten joined the Third Party. The party’s membership illustrates the Opposition’s ideological fluidity before the polarization of the 1790s. It included the ‘High Tory’ Foxite Sir Francis Basset; Lord North’s son Frederick North; John Anstruther, whose political trajectory mirrored Windham’s, and Thomas Stanley who abandoned his reformist-leaning sentiments after witnessing the storming of the Tuileries Palace. Crucially, however, prominent conservative Whigs such as Earl Fitzwilliam, Earl Spencer, Tom Grenville, and Portland opposed the move, considering Whig unity paramount.

Described by Elliot as ‘dilatory and undecided’, after this period of political activity Windham was initially a reluctant leader expressing to John Coxe Hippisley how ‘much against my will I have been obliged to act as a sort of head of a party’ nicknamed ‘as the sect of Alarmists’. Windham believed that if Portland continued to dither, they would ‘dwindle away and be dispersed in various channels till the very name and idea of the party will be lost’. Windham was finally roused into political action with his spirited opposition to Charles Grey’s motion on parliamentary reform in May 1793, after which he focused on urging Portland’s secession from Fox and preventing Pitt from poaching Alarmist MPs.

Under Windham the Alarmists pursued an independent line, providing outside support for Pitt while insisting that they would only rally to him as a collective and not individually. The latter, Pitt’s preferred strategy, had already seen Lord Loughborough (the future earl of Rosslyn) defect to become Lord Chancellor in January 1793, followed by other conservative Whigs such as Gilbert Elliot and future Member, Sylvester Douglas. Over summer 1793 Pitt attempted to coax Windham over to the Ministry with offers of high office, which Windham refused despite considerable pressure from Burke and others.

Windham persisted with his independent stance, stressing in August 1793 that a coalition was only possible ‘if others could surmount those objections’. September saw Windham appeal to Portland to lead his followers from Fox, feigning a wish to be ‘a mere member of Parliament’. He stressed that a Whig reunion was impossible and that the only options were to ‘remain a third body’ or join en masse with Pitt. Portland continued awkwardly to affirm his support for the war and opposition to Pitt.

Conservative horror was heightened further by the execution of Marie Antoinette in October and the fall of Toulon in December. Realizing the inefficacy of his stance, Portland finally led an exodus of 51 MPs. The Portlandites adopted the independent line at a meeting attended by Windham and Burke and joined the Third Party, now under Portland’s leadership. ‘Being able to form an independent Party under so very respectable a head’, Frederick North expressed to Windham, was ‘the most desirable political Event’. Despite Portland assuming leadership, though, Windham remained a significant presence.

With around 77 former Whigs among their ranks, the seceders now outnumbered the remaining 66 Foxites. What had begun with a mere 21 MPs in Pall Mall had grown to include over half of all Foxite Whigs. Despite some individual defections to Pitt, Windham’s line of ‘no longer answer[ing] separate’ remained. After negotiations, a Pitt-Portland coalition was agreed with the new ministers receiving their seals on 11 July, Windham among them as Secretary at War.

While short-lived, the party ultimately succeeded in its central objectives. An independent, hawkish, conservative Whig faction was later seen in the form of the Grenvillite ‘New Opposition’, which opposed Henry Addington’s Ministry from 1801. That stridently anti-peace faction was led in the Commons, perhaps unsurprisingly, by the resident of 106 Pall Mall.

JO

Further Reading

Herbert Butterfield, ‘Charles James Fox and the Whig Opposition in 1792’, The Cambridge Historical Journal, ix (1949), 293-330.
Leslie Mitchell, Charles James Fox and the disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782-1794 (1971).
Frank O’Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (1967).
Max Skjönsberg, The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2021).
David Wilkinson, ‘The Pitt–Portland Coalition of 1794 and the Origins of the ‘Tory’ Party’, History, lxxxiii (1998), 249-64.

For a young man seeking political independence and prestige but having little by way of financial stability to obtain it otherwise, Pitt’s strategy for targeting Cambridge made sense. But even with his failure at the 1780 election and his rapid turn of fortune, Pitt held onto his conviction. Once the opportunity arose in March 1784, Pitt opted to contest the University again, against the backdrop of his dramatic ascent to power. Standing alongside him was George FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, son of the University’s Chancellor. Opposing them were the two sitting members, James Mansfield and John Townshend, who represented Foxite interests.

While Pitt’s success in the University election seems inevitable in retrospect, this was not the case at the time of the dissolution of Parliament. From the outset, the contest was projected to be very fierce. Writing to his friend the Duke of Rutland, Pitt admitted that Cambridge was ‘unexplored ground’, though he was ‘sanguine in [his] expectations’. Owing to its position as a respectable and pious institution, the electoral culture and processes of the University significantly differed from the disorder often associated with Hanoverian elections. Hustings, dinners, and speeches were prohibited and its erudite electorate was expected to make independent choices which benefitted the nation at large.

Nevertheless, voters still expected to be courted, and with the official canvassing period being only nine days, all candidates had much to keep them occupied. Written correspondence was a key part of the canvassing process. Generic letters from candidates ‘taking the liberty’ to request ‘the honour’ of the recipient’s support were sent to all voters. But more important were the ‘personal application’ letters, used to solicit votes directly. James Talbot, Regius Professor of Hebrew, advised a prospective candidate for the 1700 election that electoral success at the University ‘must be gained by personal application, and the solicitation of private friends, letters from patrons, relations’. [Cook, Representative History, 228-9]. This was an established practice, and Pitt and his agents managed an extensive operation of sending these applications throughout the short and intense canvassing period. Some were sent directly to voters, but they often went to a ‘middle-man’ (sometimes middle-woman) – a friend of Pitt and/or the administration who could make applications to the voter(s) on their behalf.

The relationship between the ‘middle-man’ and the voter varied from patronage and friendship to kinship. In a letter between Pitt’s friends and election agents, John Charles Villiers and Thomas Pretyman-Tomline, an extensive list of ‘connexions’ which ‘sh[oul]d be immediately attended to’ was attached. Unfortunately, the list was quite rudimentary, consisting mostly of pairs of names connected by a single line, for instance: ‘[Thomas] Lund [of St John’s] – L[ad]y Irwine’. A few items contained clues regarding particular connections, such as: ‘L[or]d Aylesford c[oul]d perhaps get us even a single vote from Rev[erend] Mr Barnard of St John’s to which he has just been given a living’. [TNA, PRO 30/8/315]

Pitt and his agents had at their disposal an expansive network of contacts which covered a broad geographical, ideological and institutional range, from the reformers of the Association Movement in Yorkshire to the friends of the King such as William Hayward Roberts, Provost of Eton. The applications were not always successful, but not for reasons one might expect. Mistakes, such as targeting disenfranchised voters, were extremely common. Pre-existing personal obligations or attachments to other candidates also prevented voters from committing to Pitt. Carrington Garrick of St John’s, for example, could not vote for Pitt, having already made promises to Mansfield and Townshend, but was happy for Pitt to instruct him on the vote he also possessed for the Cambridgeshire county election [TNA, PRO 30/8/315]. Rather than political partisanship, it was often the influences and obligations associated with personal relationships which swayed the voters towards particular candidates.

Besides the letters, candidates themselves were expected to be involved on the ground, and their every move was reported in the national press. Letters exchanged between Pitt’s agents emphasised the importance of Pitt being physically present at the University, as he was expected to pay in-person visits to certain key University figures, such as the heads of the colleges. Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff and Regius Professor of Divinity, recalled in his memoir that during Pitt’s visit, he set out some policy expectations for the Prime Minister-to-be. [Watson, Anecdotes, 211-15]

Throughout the nine days, the contest remained unpredictable. Townshend was projected to top the poll, but Pitt soon took the lead. Mansfield, whose odds were poor from the beginning, reportedly planned to oust Pitt by transferring his votes to Townshend on election day. Euston’s prospects were uncertain, but his affiliation with Pitt would save him from his father’s poor reputation. By election day, set for 3 April, most of the English boroughs had already made their returns, making the University one of the last constituencies to go to the polls before the county elections began.

The University’s election took place, as it always had, in the Senate House, accompanied by the ‘notable Bustle’ from its learned population. The University enjoyed relative control over its electoral process: unlike other constituencies in this period, votes were cast in ‘secret’. Each voter would inscribe his own and his chosen candidates’ names onto a ballot paper (in Latin) before depositing it at a designated table. Each ballot was then read aloud, and subsequently recorded in the poll book. Voting took place throughout the day, with an adjournment in the early afternoon, at which point the number of votes was read out. Once voting resumed, it lasted until the end of the day, and the final count was announced. [Ceremonies Observed in the Senate-House, Wall ed. Gunning, 230-33].

According to the accounts of William Ewin and John Robinson, Pitt was ‘secure’ quite early on in the count, at two o’clock in the afternoon, and there were ‘sanguine hopes’ for Euston. For Ewin, however, Euston’s success was little more than the results of ‘the little Electioneering Tricks of making over Votes & people breaking their words & promises’. Never one to shy away from gossip, Ewin suggested that this was the result of the ‘art’ and machinations used by ‘a Certain great man’. It is unclear whom this comment targeted – Pitt certainly seemed a prime suspect, but it is not unreasonable to assume that it could be the King, who was certainly pleased with the Ministry’s sweeping victory at the University.

Pitt would faithfully represent the University until his death in 1806. Though history has been kind to him, it has been less kind to the University as a political institution. Much like other features of Hanoverian politics, it was lambasted by the Victorians as corrupt and anachronistic. By examining some of its unique characteristics, however, we can begin to recalibrate our understanding not only of Pitt or Cambridge but also of the inner workings of political life in this period.

NSJ

Further Reading
John Cannon, The Fox-North Coalition: Crisis of the Constitution, 1782-4 (Cambridge, 1969)

David Cook, The Representative History of the County, Town, and University of Cambridge, 1689-1832 (University of London PhD thesis, 1935)

John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1989)

Joseph S. Meisel, Knowledge and Power: The Parliamentary Representation of Universities in Britain and the Empire (Parliamentary History: Texts & Studies, 4, 2011)

Peter Searby, A History of the University of Cambridge, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1997)

‘William Pitt and Pembroke’, Pembroke Annual Gazette (Pembroke College Society, Vol. 8, 1934), held in Pembroke College Archive, Cambridge

On 6 March 1725, Pope Benedict XIII (1724-30) was roused from a period of private prayer with the news that ‘Queen’ Clementina, consort of the exiled James Edward Stuart (to his Jacobite supporters, James III and VIII) had given birth to a son in the Palazzo Muti in Rome. In spite of James and Benedict having decidedly tricky relations, the Pope hurried over to greet the new infant and promptly baptized him Henry Benedict (along with perhaps as many as ten other names).

Unlike his older brother, Charles Edward, Henry Benedict has attracted comparatively little attention. This is hardly surprising given his reputation for caution and his eminently sensible decision not to follow his brother to Scotland in 1745. Instead, it was left to Henry to undertake the thankless but necessary task of remaining in France, rallying support, while Charles tried and failed to regain a crown, and ultimately to organize a ship to rescue the by then rather battered Young Chevalier after his months hiding in the heather.

The failure of the 45 Rebellion no doubt confirmed Henry in his view that further escapades were ill-advised, and helped convince him to follow an alternative path. In 1747, he made the momentous decision to enter the church and was fast-tracked through the clerical ranks, emerging as a Cardinal that summer. It was by no means welcome to his family, though James seems to have become reconciled to it sooner than Charles, writing to ‘My dearest Carluccio’ that he was:

Fully convinced of the sincerity and solidity of his vocation; I should think it a resisting of the will of God, and acting directly against my conscience, if I should pretend to constrain him in a matter which so nearly concerns him. [Kelly, 36]

It seems, in any case, that Henry’s decision was not wholly a surprise, and that plans may have been afoot to have him made a cardinal as far back as 1740. [Corp, 225] James was not minded to agree to a suggestion by Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) that Henry be made Cardinal Protector of England, Scotland or Ireland, [Corp, 232] though the British press reported that ‘when’ the exiled dynasty was back in possession, Henry was to be sent as Papal Legate. [St James’s Evening Post, 25-28 July 1747]

Henry’s decision to abandon a potential military career did not prevent him from being an occasional focus for disloyalty in England. His birthday, the year after he entered the church, was celebrated by five inebriated students of Balliol College, Oxford, with minor hooliganism committed against staunchly Whig Exeter College, while one of them shouted out ‘God bless King James, God damn King George’. Two of the ringleaders were later sentenced to two years in prison for their actions. [Monod, 276-7]

In stark contrast to his undergraduate fan club, Henry appears to have set about his new vocation with studied seriousness. That he had not altogether forsaken his position as a claimant to the British throne is indicated, though, by his decision to issue a medal with his image on it following the death of his father in 1766, even though Charles (Charles III to the Jacobites) chose not to bother. The same medal was then reissued 22 years later, after Charles’s death, when Henry became (again, according to the Jacobite succession) Henry IX. On the reverse was a diplomatically worded Latin motto, taken from Peter’s first epistle: ‘Non desideriis hominum, sed voluntate dei’, which as Monod observes ‘was so inoffensive as to lack any real seditious import’. [Monod, 88, 91]

As the medal demonstrated, while Henry chose not to do anything to encourage rebellion against his cousin, George III, he was keen to insist on his royal status and to keep up certain rites and standards. Insisting on wearing ermine was one, but perhaps most important, he persisted with the family tradition of ‘touching’ for scrofula, issuing special tokens for people afflicted with the condition. His brother, Charles had touched at least one sufferer while in Edinburgh in 1745 [Brogan, 213, 217]

If Henry trod a cautious path from his entry into the church through to his own ‘succession’ on Charles’s demise, he was unable to prepare for the dramatic changes ushered in by the French revolution. In 1796, Bonaparte invaded Italy, and Pope Pius VI (1775-99) was forced to hand over vast sums to prevent widespread pillaging in and around Rome. Henry made his own contribution by parting with a ruby, once the property of his maternal family, worth an estimated £60,000. [Kelly, 97] The following year, a new invasion force proved less willing to be bought off, and Henry became an exile twice over – quitting his villa outside Rome for Messina, thence to Corfu before finally returning to the Italian peninsula and settling in Venice.

It was there, that the cardinal’s journey in some ways came full circle. Having spent his whole life a representative of a rival dynasty to the ruling Hanoverians, it was to his cousins that Henry was ultimately indebted for saving him from penury. Thanks to an intercession from Cardinal Borgia, contact was made with a sympathetic Catholic gentleman in England, whose contacts ultimately passed the petition for assistance to the king. Advised by William Pitt that Henry ‘the last relick of an Illustrious Family’ was now ‘reduced to a state of distress which bordered on wretchedness’, George concurred that something needed to be done and through Lord Minto, ambassador at Vienna, he offered Henry an annual pension of £4,000. [Hampshire/Portsmouth Telegraph, 30 Dec. 1799] Acknowledging the king’s ‘noble way of thinking’, Henry accepted.

Having been saved from eking out his final days in a state of poverty, Henry was able to focus on the Conclave, summoned following Pius VI’s death in August 1799, and which convened in Venice from the winter of 1799 through to the spring of 1800. While there had been various reports in the British press late the previous year of efforts being made ‘to seat Cardinal York in the Papal Chair’, he seems never to have been a serious candidate for the papacy himself. [Hampshire/Portsmouth Telegraph, 9 Dec. 1799] Rather, it was left to him to play a supporting role in the eventual election of Cardinal Chiaramonti as Pope Pius VII (1800-23). Later that year, he was able to stage a return to Rome, where he lived out his remaining days in comparative luxury.

To the very end, Henry maintained the careful course he had always navigated. In his will of 1802, signed (rather optimistically) Henry Roi, he repeated an earlier declaration that the de jure succession to the British throne lay (after him) with the reigning king of Sardinia. However, on his death five years later he was also careful to acknowledge the assistance he had received from his Hanoverian cousins by returning to George, Prince of Wales, some of the regalia carried overseas by his grandfather, James II and VII, almost 120 years earlier.

RDEE

Further Reading:
Stephen Brogan, The Royal Touch in Early Modern England (2015)
Edward Corp, The Stuarts in Italy, 1719-1766: A Royal Court in Permanent Exile (2011)
Bernard Kelly, Life of Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York (1899)
Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English people, 1688-1788 (1989)

As the Prince of Wales was 26 years old, it was assumed that he would be made regent during his father’s incapacity. Although Prime Minister William Pitt agreed that the Prince was the obvious choice for a regency, he was wary of taking this step because of the younger George’s well-known friendships with Opposition politicians. The Opposition, led by Charles James Fox, clamoured for their ‘friend’ to be made regent on the assumption that George III would not recover. Meanwhile, Pitt and the government stalled, insisting that a full regency was unnecessary, as the king would recover in short order. Instead, the government suggested a restricted regency, which would limit the prince’s powers and place some responsibility in the hands of the queen: Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. This approach was immediately viewed by the Opposition and their supporters as unconstitutional, and as an attempt by Pitt to control the country through Queen Charlotte.

Although Queen Charlotte had never shown any interest in influencing British politics before, she suddenly found herself saddled with a reputation for political meddling. Such was the belief that the queen was colluding with Pitt that her second son, the duke of York, confronted her and warned her that if she sided with Pitt, it would cause a falling out with the Prince of Wales.

Although the Prince was often described within the family as the queen’s favourite child, their relationship certainly cooled in the winter of 1788-89. Courtiers were shocked by the way the two eldest princes treated their mother at this time. William Grenville remarked to his brother, the marquess of Buckingham, ‘I could tell you some particulars of the Prince of Wales’s behaviour towards her [the queen] within these last few days that would make your blood run cold.’ [Buckingham and Chandos, 68] Charlotte Papendiek, whose family were in service to the royal family for decades, recalled that the Prince of Wales was ‘very heartless’ as he ‘assumed to himself a power that had not yet been legally given to him, without any consideration or regard for his mother’s feelings.’ [Papendiek, 15] Meanwhile, Queen Charlotte was deeply affected by the king’s erratic behaviour and the seriousness of his illness; one of her attendants, the author Frances Burney, witnessed her pacing in her rooms and crying ‘What will become of me?’ [Burney, 293]

In the press, the queen’s reputation was dragged through the mud by newspapers and satirical prints produced by supporters of the Prince of Wales and the Opposition. One satirical print portrayed the queen looking on with satisfaction as her son was attacked by British and foreign politicians.

Another showed her stepping on the Prince of Wales’s emblem as she left the Treasury with Prime Minister Pitt. The Morning Chronicle cast aspersions on her devotion to her husband, claiming that she was motivated by a desire to take possession of diamonds worth thousands of pounds, not by any wish to help the king.

When it was suggested that the queen would take charge of the royal household and privy purse in a restricted regency, The Times published a comment made by Opposition MP Edmund Burke in Parliament that he ‘by no means thought her [the queen] the most proper person to be entrusted with the giving away of such an immense sum of money.’ In January 1789, as plans for a regency became more urgent, Earl Harcourt recorded a remark made by Burke during a debate: ‘The question is now come to this. Is it to be the House of Hanover, or the House of Strelitz that is to govern the country?’ [Harcourt, 167] For all its hyperbole, Burke’s question had explicitly marked Queen Charlotte, previously a queen of excellent reputation, as a threat to the established order.

Charlotte wasn’t the only woman whose reputation was tarnished by accusations of political meddling in Georgian Britain. Her mother-in-law, Augusta, Princess of Wales, was accused of influencing her son, George III, for decades. There were also long-term rumours of a supposed affair with the former Prime Minister, the earl of Bute. Horace Walpole recorded that during the princess’s funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, Londoners ‘treated her memory with much disrespect.’ [Walpole, 17] Anxiety over the influence of women in politics was expressed in the contemporary phrase ‘petticoat government’, which suggested that male political leaders were being unduly influenced by women, be they mothers, wives, or lovers.

Most critiques of Queen Charlotte portrayed her as a willing follower of Pitt’s schemes, rather than an active agent in her own right, but the queen was not afraid to stand up for herself and the king when necessary. In January 1789, a further scandal of the Regency Crisis unfolded after the queen insisted that a more positive note be included in the king’s daily health bulletin. The bulletins rarely varied, but in early January, Charlotte was informed by one of the royal physicians that the king seemed slightly better. One of her attendants, Lady Harcourt, recorded that when the head physician argued that he saw no improvement, the queen overrode him and insisted that the phrase ‘His Majesty is in a more comfortable state’ be added [Harcourt, 125-8]. When the Opposition heard of this, they insisted on a government inquiry into the credentials of the king’s physicians: their ambition for power through the Prince of Wales depended on George III’s illness being permanent and any suggestion to the contrary was unwelcome.

Fortunately for Queen Charlotte, just as the government was beginning to put in place a restricted regency in February 1789, George III began to show signs of sustained improvement. By March, he was sufficiently well to make a formal speech in Parliament announcing his recovery. Queen Charlotte led the nation in celebrating his recovery, organising Thanksgiving services and ordering official commemorative gifts for loyal attendants. Despite this happy ending and the ensuing national celebrations of the king and his loyal consort, the spectre of the Regency Crisis would taint Queen Charlotte’s public reputation for the rest of her life.

NG

Further Reading
Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, vol.2 (Hurst & Blackett, 1853).
Charlotte Papendiek, Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte: Being the Journals of Mrs Papendiek, Assistant Keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to Her Majesty, Edited by Her Granddaughter Mrs Vernon Delves Broughton, vol.2 (R.Bentley & Son, 1887).
Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, Author of Evelina, Cecilia etc, ed. Charlotte Barrett, vol.4 (H. Colburn, 1842-6).
[Anon.] The Restricted Regency (1789).
Morning Herald, 5 January 1789.
The Times, 7 February 1789.
The Harcourt Papers, ed. Edward William Harcourt, vol.4 (Oxford: J. Parker & Co., 1880).
Horace Walpole, Journal of the Reign of King George the Third, from the year 1771-1783, ed. John Doran (1859).
Report from the Committee Appointed to Examine the Physicians Who Have Attended His Majesty During His Illness, Touching the Present State of His Majesty’s Health, 13 January 1789 (John Stockdale, 1789).

On 19 December 1783 William Pitt accepted George III’s request for him to form an administration, becoming the youngest ever holder of the office of Prime Minister. The past few months had seen several ministries come and go. There was no reason to expect that Pitt’s would be any different, though one newspaper opined: ‘May he long remain in that situation is the wish of every friend to his country’ [Public Advertiser, 20 December 1783]. The outgoing administration, known as ‘Fox-North’, but headed technically by the duke of Portland, still had a sizeable majority in the House of Commons. There was thus every reason to expect that the naysayers would be proved right and that Pitt’s ‘Mince Pie’ administration would not outlast the Christmas season.

Pitt the Younger’s rise to the top was meteoric by any measure. In 1780 he had been knocked back standing for Cambridge University in the general election but the following year he was given a seat at Appleby by Sir James Lowther, thanks to an intervention by the duke of Rutland. He had only been an MP for 18 months when government came knocking. In July 1782 the earl of Shelburne was struggling to put together a ministry following the death of the marquess of Rockingham. Shelburne was not a popular man and a number of Rockingham’s friends chose to quit rather than serve under him. Lacking anyone else, Shelburne turned to Pitt to become chancellor of the exchequer. Pitt was just 23 years old. He had, in fact, been intended for the Home Office, but there were difficulties with appointing someone as secretary of state with so little experience.

As well taking on the chancellorship, Pitt was also detailed by Shelburne with the job of trying to secure more backing for the ministry, which faced serious opposition from the Foxite Whigs and followers of Lord North. Pitt refused to deal with the latter, so called on Charles James Fox to try to broker a deal but Fox made it clear that under no circumstances would he serve with Shelburne.

By February 1783 Shelburne’s ministry had already run out of steam and Shelburne recommended Pitt to the king to take over as Prime Minister. Pitt declined the job, thereby helping to usher in the next short-lived ‘Fox-North’ ministry. The king, though, was determined not to suffer the coalition a moment longer than necessary. By December Fox-North was out and George III was looking for his third premier of the year. Once again, he turned to Pitt; and this time Pitt accepted the challenge.

Pitt became Prime Minister, with just under a week to go before Christmas, and every reason to believe that he would be out again as quickly as everyone thought. Things began badly with Earl Temple, dubbed by Thomas Orde as a ‘d—d, dolterheaded Coward’, resigning from the government after just four days, while other senior figures refused to serve from the off. There seemed every reason to believe that Frances Crewe, darling of the Whigs and distinguished in their circles with the toast: ‘Buff and Blue, and Mrs Crewe’ was in the right when she declared Pitt:

may do what he likes during the holidays, but it will be a mince-pie administration, depend upon it

Bets were taken on how long the ministry might limp on: Fox thought it could last longer than a week. Unable to persuade most of the heavy-weights to join him, Pitt was forced to hand most cabinet posts to lesser figures – all of them in the Lords. Indeed, Pitt was the only minister of cabinet rank in the Commons. He did, though, have useful support from some junior ministers who would come to be important figures in their own right: notably a future prime minister, William Grenville, and Pitt’s right-hand man in Scotland, the controversial Henry Dundas.

Despite the decidedly shaky start, Pitt’s position was not as bad as it seemed. He enjoyed the king’s confidence and quickly demonstrated more resolution than Shelburne had managed in facing down the opposition. When Parliament returned from the Christmas recess, Pitt was still in office and Members of both Houses began to realize that this time there was reason to shift their allegiance to the king’s man. Festive allusions continued to feature, though. One popular satire of March 1784 featured Pitt as ‘Plum Pudding Billy’ being presented with a huge pudding. Behind him, carrying a chamber pot, was a superannuated John Wilkes: the former radical having decided that Pitt was the man to follow.

The occasion being marked was Pitt’s reception at Grocer’s Hall on 28 February where he was awarded the freedom of the City of London. Wilkes had been there in his role as City Chamberlain. Wilkes’s diary entry for that day made little of the occasion, only noting the dinner at the hall, and the main attendants: Pitt, Lord Temple, Pitt’s older brother, the 2nd earl of Chatham, and a handful of others including William Grenville. He did not mention Pitt and Chatham being waylaid on their way home outside Brooks’s by a group of chairmen ‘armed with bludgeons, broken Chair Poles &c’. The Foxites may have been behind the attack but it only helped demonstrate that talk of mince pies or plum puddings was by then well out of date. Indeed, Pitt was on the verge of turning the tables on the opposition.

In April a new general election was called and this time the supporters of Fox and North were routed. Pitt also had the quiet satisfaction of exchanging his ‘borrowed’ seat at Appleby for Cambridge University, which would remain his seat for the remainder of his career. Fox, meanwhile, faced a fierce contest in Westminster and was forced to accept a deal whereby he was returned for a pocket borough before his election at Westminster was confirmed.

The Mince Pie administration was only supposed to have lasted a matter of days, or weeks. It survived to see Pitt triumph at the 1784 general election and his premiership then endured until 1801. He then returned as Prime Minister three years later for a further 18 months, before dying in office in 1806. The length of his premiership remains the second longest, with only Sir Robert Walpole lasting longer.

Frances Crewe could not have been more wrong in her assessment about Pitt’s prospects for success. She did, though, have the mild satisfaction of living to see her husband raised to the peerage just a month after Pitt’s death.

RDEE

Further Reading

Robin Eagles, ed, The Diaries of John Wilkes (London Record Society, xlv, 2014)

Matthew Kilburn ‘Mince-pie administration’, Oxford DNB

L.G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Oxford 1992)

Jacqueline Reiter, The Late Lord: The Life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham (2017)

Party is a crucial theme in William Hogarth’s four election paintings from the second half of the 1750s. The paintings were in part inspired by the controversial Oxfordshire election of 1754, one of the last major strongholds of Tory-Jacobitism in eighteenth-century England. The four paintings depict how Tories dressed in blue and Whigs in orange entertain and canvass voters, the polling where Tories and Whigs alike engage in dubious practices to gain votes, and finally the ‘chairing’ of the winning candidate. The Oxfordshire election is often said to have been violently partisan to an unusual degree for mid-century politics, but it was mirrored by comparable developments elsewhere at the same time, notably in Bristol and Nottingham. In any event, Hogarth clearly captured something peculiar about eighteenth-century Britain: its party-dominated politics.

Parties or partisanship in a broad sense may be as old as the earliest societies where there was competition for office. But what did ‘party’ mean in eighteenth-century Britain? Some historians have applied lists of criteria to identify specific parties at particular moments, but such an approach may say more about how we understand the concept than about the period of enquiry. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) defined a political party as: ‘[a] number of persons confederated by similarity of designs or opinions in opposition to others; a faction’.

Johnson’s ostensibly simple definition hints that political party in the eighteenth century carried more than one meaning in British discourse, although many of them overlapped. (1) Party could simply mean internal division in general terms. (2) It could more specifically refer to the Whig and Tory parties. (3) It frequently related to religious divisions, such as Anglicans and Dissenters – a crucial division since the ‘Clarendon Code’ in the 1660s – or high churchmen and latitudinarians, with countless theological subcategories. (4) It could refer to the Court and Country ‘parties’, in other words those of government and opposition. (5) It could refer to the Jacobite threat. (6) It could mean political or parliamentary connection, that is, a smaller political group led by an identifiable leader, for example the Rockingham party connection. (7) It more rarely denoted different parts of the constitution, as in Commons and Lords. (8) Lastly, it could be synonymous with faction.

‘Faction’ in turn did not strictly correspond to our modern usage, when it denotes a splinter group or a party within a party. In the eighteenth century, it could broadly mean four things. Firstly, it could denote the Whig and Tory factions, in other words be interchangeable with party. Secondly, it could mean something akin to ‘interest-group’, notably an economic interest. Thirdly, it could refer to a party connection purely motivated by ambition and self-interest, with little or no interest in principles or opinions. This was sometimes described as a degenerated party, underlining the loose terminology. Finally, it could imply the even more negative connotation of a conspiracy within the state to destroy the constitution.

Following Sir Lewis Namier, the eighteenth century is often described as a period of personal factionalism followed by a clear two-party system in the nineteenth century. The truth is that most of the eighteenth century can be viewed as a period of fluctuation between personal factionalism and two-party division. Although ‘party spirit’ waxed and waned, and the British press was often quick to celebrate when it diminished, ‘party’ was a persistent key word in political debate. Moreover, the British parties continuously confounded foreign visitors and commentators in the Hanoverian period especially. Voltaire observed in his Letters on the English Nation (1733) that the prevalence of party spirit in the country meant that ‘[o]ne half of the nation [was] always the enemy of the other’.

Denouncing party division was a commonplace in eighteenth-century political discourse, and suspicion of party would remain strong at the end of the century, notably in William Pitt the Younger. Many paid lip service to the ideal of consensus. The most fundamental reason why parties were so widely disliked was that division was seen as posing an existential threat to the political community. But parties were also disliked for what we may call lesser reasons. One of the most common criticisms of party was that it impeded independence as it encouraged a form of herd mentality.

We should not exaggerate the dislike of party, however, since it could also be a powerful principle for rallying support. Sir Robert Walpole’s speech to followers and potential followers, at the height of the Excise Crisis of 1733, ahead of a crucial vote in the Commons, is a case in point. Walpole professed that he was ‘not pleading [his] own cause, but the cause of the Whig party’, adding that ‘it is in Whig principles I have lived, and in Whig principles I will die.’ Lord Hervey commented that the speech reignited ‘party spirit’ and helped secure a favourable outcome. Edmund Burke was thus not being anachronistic when he wrote in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) that Walpole had governed by ‘party attachments’. This example shows that it would be too simplistic to conclude that ‘party’ was simply an accusatory term at the time. Indeed, it often formed part of the glue which helped maintain co-operation between leading politicians in the eighteenth century.

MS

Further Reading

Max Skjönsberg, The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Accompanying the publication of a new collection covering 300 years of British Prime Ministers, the book’s editor compiled a list assessing the 55 premiers in order of their significance. Frederick, Lord North, who became Prime Minister in 1770 and is probably best known as the man who lost America, came towards the bottom of the pile at number forty. Dr Robin Eagles reassesses North’s early response to growing tensions in America and how he was caught asleep on the job in more ways than one…

By the time he finally succeeded to the House of Lords as 2nd earl of Guilford in 1790, Lord North‘s effective career was long over. He had spent his whole life waiting to take control of the family estates, and when they finally came to him he was barely well enough to know what to do with them. Besides, North’s whole reputation by then was overtaken by two things: his highly controversial decision to go into coalition with Charles James Fox in 1783; and the loss of America – a cause that had dominated his premiership of over a decade.

North had been just 37 years old when he became Prime Minister. The circumstances were unpropitious, and like the (even more youthful) Younger Pitt in his first few weeks in office, he faced a turbulent situation in Parliament as he settled into the role. His appointment had come following a period of crisis in government with the king at one point reported to have laid his hand on his sword insisting ‘I will have recourse to this sooner than yield to a dissolution’. [John Brooke, George III, p.158] Unsurprisingly, North had been extremely reluctant to take on the premiership. Despite this, some senior politicians were cautiously optimistic about him. Lord Holland noted in a letter to a friend:

I believe you hear, as I do, a very good account of Lord North of whom, without knowing him, I have a very high opinion; but whether good omens will be follow’d by good events or no, you will not wonder that I don’t guess…

Campbell Correspondence, ed. Davies, p.316

One advantage was that, unlike Pitt, North was able to draw on a lengthy political apprenticeship. He had been returned to the Commons in his early twenties in 1754, and had become a predictably fast friend of the king, continuing the family tradition of loyal dependability. He accepted his first post in government in 1759 and from 1767 had served as chancellor of the exchequer. All of this ought, on the face of it, to have made him well prepared for the task ahead.

All of North’s good qualities – and there were plenty of them – were insufficient for a crisis of the proportions that was about to assail his administration from America. Some were out of North’s control; others stemmed from policies to which he had contributed in previous administrations. Perhaps the biggest problem was that no one ever seemed entirely sure quite what government policy towards the colonies was supposed to be, though there should have been little doubt given the king’s own very clear determination to keep America as a British possession. North’s own response left everyone mildly confused. On one occasion, he was asked what the government plan was, only for him to reply that no one had come up with one. Famously soporific, he was occasionally caught napping (quite literally) and after dozing off in one debate in the House of Commons William Burke suggested:

I wish the noble lord opposite had someone at his elbow, to pull him every now and then by the ear, and give him a gentle tap on the shoulder… to keep him awake to the affairs of America

Thomas, p.71

The early months of North’s administration were dominated by the proposed repeal of the unpopular Townshend duties (which imposed taxes on various goods within America), while maintaining the levy on tea. On 5 March, North set out his stall, criticizing American trade boycotts, but insisting that keeping the levy on luxury items like tea made sense, and generated much-needed revenue to help run colonial government. In his effort to arrive at a compromise position, North warned his colleagues not to ‘imitate the man in the fable, and consent to lose a single eye merely that their neighbours may be wholly deprived of sight’. [Cobbett, Parliamentary History, xvi. 854] Unsurprisingly, North faced criticism from both sides, with some opposed to any alteration to the measures, and others equally convinced that anything short of full repeal would be a waste of effort. One Member, Sir William Meredith noted:

It amazes me not a little to find administration so perversely, so inflexibly persisting in error on every occasion; it is surprising, to use an expression of Dryden’s – “That they never deviate into sense”

In a subsequent debate of 8 May, relating to the recent disorders in America, North’s attitude riled the former Prime Minister, George Grenville, who, in what was to be his final speech in the Commons, criticized the government in no uncertain terms and concluded prophetically:

to his neglect the King may owe the loss of America

Cavendish Debates, II. 36

The debates in the Commons were then mimicked by one in the Lords ten days later, promoted by the duke of Richmond, who, like Grenville, accused the ministry of neglect and how in spite of “the solemn assurances given us at the commencement of the session, like the baseless fabric of a vision, vanish totally into air, and leave not a wreck behind”. Soon after, the session was brought to a close.

After the turmoil of the previous session, things looked more positive for North as Parliament reconvened in the winter of 1770. Grenville’s death on the opening day of the session (13 November) boosted the government benches as many of his followers were subsequently absorbed by the ministry. Nevertheless, the king’s speech delivered on the day Grenville died made clear that the state of America remained at the top of the government’s agenda and, although many of the problems were thought to have been alleviated, tensions remained. Just over two years later, the new Tea Act of 1773 precipitated a fresh round of agitation, resulting in the Boston Tea Party and the steady slide into war.

During the early months of his premiership North had declared himself to be ‘a friend to trade and a friend to America’ [Thomas, p.70]. Ultimately, he succeeded in being neither.

RDEE

Further Reading

The Prime Ministers, ed. Iain Dale (2020)

PDG Thomas, Lord North (1976)

The Parliamentary History of England… Volume XVI

The Correspondence of John Campbell MP… ed. J.E. Davies (Parliamentary History: Texts & Studies 8)

On this blog we are publishing some tasters of ‘The Story of Parliament’ from a number of the academics who contributed to the book. Our fifth post looks at two of Parliament’s greatest rivals: William Pitt and Charles James Fox.

 This article was originally written by Dr Paul Seaward, Director of the History of Parliament.

William Pitt (“Pitt the Younger”, 1759-1806) and Charles James Fox (1749-1806) were the most famous and talented politicians of their time. They were also among the best connected. Both emerged from the highest ranks of the Whig party. Pitt was the son of another William Pitt (“the Elder”), a politician who had led Britain’s global struggle in the Seven Years’ War with France of 1756-63. Fox, a descendant of King Charles II, was the son of Henry Fox, a politician who had responded to a humiliating subordination to Pitt the elder in the House of Commons by helping George III to end the war after he gained the throne in 1760, and by supporting the new king’s hated minister Lord Bute. Charles James Fox and Pitt the Younger were both hot-housed children, favourites of their fathers (his father’s indulgence was said to have made Fox into an idle spendthrift, addicted to gambling and women).

Fox was elected to parliament in 1764 at the age of 19, despite the fact that men were not supposed to become MPs until they were 21. Twenty years later, deeply distrusted by royalty because of his support for the Americans in their war of independence, he was forced from office by the king. The replacement for his ministry in which he had been foreign secretary (the much-derided Fox-North coalition) was headed by Pitt, only 24, and elected to parliament just three years before. Shaky at first, Pitt remained premier continuously and exhaustingly until 1801, with a further period from 1804 until his death under two years later. For most of that time he faced Fox who, as head of a Whig Party, was dedicated to limiting the powers and prerogatives of the crown. The French Revolution of 1789 was greeted by Fox with enthusiasm as a blow to royal power in another country. But as the Revolution turned violent and bloody many in his party deserted him. Fox himself, while lamenting the atrocities, attempted to explain the excessive brutality as an understandable reaction to monarchical despotism.

From 1793 Britain was at war with France. Pitt, like his father, became celebrated (though less successful) wartime leader. Fox, with a dwindling band of supporters, became associated with a growing radical movement, opposing a war that he believed to be unnecessary. Between 1797 and 1801, thoroughly disillusioned, he seceded from parliament altogether. Poles apart, the two men’s differing political positions now reflected their apparently contrasting characters: Fox the brilliant but carefree playboy, Pitt the calculating political machine.

PS

‘The Story of Parliament’ is available at the Parliamentary bookshop for £14.99. You can purchase it here.

On this blog we are publishing some tasters of ‘The Story of Parliament’ from a number of the academics who contributed to the book. Our fourth post looks at the origins of the Prime Minister’s office in the 18^th century, now of course the most important political post in the country.

This article was originally written by Dr Robin Eagles, Senior Research Fellow in the House of Lords 1660-1832 section.

One of the most significant political developments of the 18^th century was the emergence of the office of prime minister. Sir Robert Walpole (1722-42) is normally credited with being the first effective holder of the office, though Walpole never styled himself as such. He owed his position to holding in combination the offices of the first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, as well as being the principal government spokesman in the Commons. It was the first of these offices that was to become synonymous with the premiership. Walpole was notorious for presiding over a system based on corruption, but his significance was not so much the extent of his authority – it could be argued that the Earl of Godolphin (Lord High Treasurer from 1702-10) or Robert Harley (Lord High Treasurer from 1711-14) had wielded more extensive control over appointments – but his ability to maintain his position from the House of Commons for such a lengthy period. After Walpole’s fall and following the short-lived ministry of the Earl of Wilmington, the effective inheritor of Walpole’s mantle was Henry Pelham (1743-54), who again presided over the ministry from the Commons.

Government in the 18^th century, though, remained a collaborative affair with the king at times a very active partner. During the remainder of the century, only three prime ministers managed the government from the lower house: George Grenville (1763-65), Lord North (1770-80) and William Pitt (1783-1801, 1804-06). The other eight were all senior figures in the House of Lords, though the Duke of Portland (1783) for one was merely a figurehead presiding over the so-called Fox-North coalition. Even in the nineteenth century many prime ministers led the government from the Lords: only in the twentieth century did it become the firm convention for the position to be held by an MP.

RDEE

‘The Story of Parliament’ is available at the Parliamentary bookshop for £14.99. You can purchase it here.