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George III and the Politicians1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Extract

George III's opinions on politics and the constitution have usually been contrasted with those of some people called ‘the whigs’. The contrast and even the terminology are no mere invention of historians. Quite early in the reign, politicians were already reviving the terms ‘whig’ and ‘tory’, and using them no longer, as in 1760, to denote certain groups of men who called themselves whigs and tories, but to indicate differences of opinion between people hitherto called whigs, about the constitutional rights of the Crown and their proper exercise. “Whigs called other whigs by the name of tories, and ‘pure’ whiggism was increasingly identified with a kind of anti-monarchism which may or may not have been a whig principle in earlier times but was not often expressed openly in 1760. This identification had proceeded pretty far by 1780, the date of Dunning's famous resolution; and two years later, when George III made Shelburne his prime minister without consulting the cabinet, Fitzpatrick thought it natural to say, ‘If this is suffered, there is an end of whig principles.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1951

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References

page 127 note 2 It is not easy to ascertain the earliest occasion upon which a whig called another whig a tory for pursuing a tory policy; for the whig dukes—Newcastle and Devonshire—were also obsessed by the belief that George III and Bute were re-admitting to power the survivors of the old tory party, and the two accusations got mixed up. The earliest instance I can find in George III's reign is a remark made by Henry Fox to Horace Walpole in the spring of 1762: ‘The Duke of Devonshire says it is a Tory measure to abandon the Continent. For my part,’ Fox added significantly, ‘I do not know who are Whigs’ (Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ed. Barker, Russell, i. 123Google Scholar). The elder Pitt was also among the earliest whig politicians to stigmatize a fellow-whig as a tory. In August 1763, during one of his ostentatiously whig moods, he called the administration of his brotherin-law Grenville, George a ‘tory administration’ (Grenville Papers, ed. Smith, W. J., ii. 199)Google Scholar.

page 128 note 1 Fitzpatrick to Ossory, 3 July 1782, printed by Russell, Lord John in Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, i. 459Google Scholar.

page 128 note 2 Fox's letters of 3 September and 12 October 1792 to Holland (ibid., ii. 368–9, 373) show his naive attempts to apply British constitutional principles to French politics.

page 128 note 3 Sedgwick, Romney, Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766, p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

page 129 note 1 The elder Pitt, down to 1769, is the most conspicuous exception; and even he made difficulties, though of a different kind.

page 129 note 2 For example, Sedgwick, , op. cit., pp. 6, 19, 45–6Google Scholar.

page 129 note 3 See George III's letter to Bute, November 1762, ibid., p. 166.

page 130 note 1 There is an amusing example of the difference between the king's and the politicians' ideas of the public service in George III's memorandum printed by Sir John Fortescue as no. 139 in his edition of the Correspondence of King George III. The king objected to making the disreputable Weymouth lord lieutenant of Ireland—a post which particularly required private virtues in its holder, as he represented the king's person. Grenville replied, in effect, that he should support any nominee of his colleague Bedford's for this post, whatever his character might be. The king thought this a very strange idea; the minister, no doubt, was equally surprised at the king's.

page 130 note 2 Caldwell Papers (Maitland Club, 1854), part ii, vol. i. 242Google Scholar.

page 130 note 3 See his letter to Bute, , circa 03 1763Google Scholar, Sedgwick, , op. cit., p. 198Google Scholar.

page 130 note 4 See, for example, his remarks to Fox about Pitt and Sir Thomas Robinson, reported by Walpole, Horace in Memoirs of the Reign of George II (London, 1846), ii. 267Google Scholar.

page 130 note 5 Rochford, Stormont and Grantham had all been ambassadors, and George III often thought of making Sir Joseph Yorke a secretary of state. This was not altogether a new thing: Stanhope, Carteret, Harrington and Chesterfield had all had diplomatic experience. Presumably this was due, in part, to the earlier Hanoverians' preference for professional efficiency and, still more, to the fact that a diplomatic career was the only place where aristocrats—especially members of the House of Lords—could and would serve a paid apprenticeship in public business.

page 131 note 1 See, for example, his correspondence with North, Barrington and Jenkinson (Fortescue, op. cit., nos. 1010, 1702, 1773, 2096, 2110, 2130, 2144, 2146, 2157, 2164, etc.).

page 131 note 2 Many soldier-M.P.s had regiments and governorships of forts. George III told North, 16 February 1773, ‘the taking away regiments I can never think adviseable but Governments are a very fair prey’ (Fortescue, op. cit., no. 1201).

page 131 note 3 Mansfield advised George III to take the counsel of a bishop on church preferments so as to keep his ministers out of the business (George III to Bute, 7 April 1763, Sedgwick, , op. cit., p. 212Google Scholar). George III did not altogether take this advice; but he did, in 1765, join the archbishop of Canterbury with Newcastle in a mandate to recommend church preferments, instead of leaving it to Newcastle alone, like George II. More than once he announced his intentions to North, or told him to consult the archbishop, before North can have tendered any advice (Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, , nos. 1550, 1923, 1981Google Scholar).

page 131 note 4 Ibid., nos. 928, 1117.

page 131 note 5 As when he declined to promote a silent relation of Weymouth's, probably to the Board of Trade, because ‘his. not taking an active part in debates would have hurt those who stand forward in the House of Commons’ (Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, no. 678). Yet he had to acquiesce, a few years later, in the promotion of the even more silent Mr. Gibbon to that board, as part of a political job.

page 132 note 1 Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, no. 4472.

page 132 note 2 Charles Yorke seems to be a good example of this, among the lawyers; it is evident that for him, his professional rivalry with Pratt was the one reality in politics. Perhaps Conway's unsatisfactoriness as a politician can be explained partly by saying that he was not interested in politics, but in military preferment. Charles Yorke's brother Joseph, though a member of parliament, was primarily interested in his diplomatic career; indeed, since diplomacy (except a few great posts like the Paris embassy) was beginning to be considered outside politics, a politician like Hans Stanley, who wanted a quiet life and continuous employment, would flee to it (Grenville Papers, iii. 284).

page 132 note 3 Northington did this in 1765 and 1766, Thurlow in 1781–2. Probably Bathurst, who acted similarly in 1778, believed that the ministry was going to fall. Conway, in 1782–3, allowed himself to be carried over from ministry to ministry, and claimed to choose whether he should be treated as a military expert or a cabinet minister (Walpole, Horace, Last Journals, ed. Steuart, , ii. 451, 510)Google Scholar.

page 133 note 1 Even the noble amateurs themselves sometimes thought their appointments rather strange: see the second earl of Northington's letter to Fox, 17 November 1783, in Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ii. 183.

page 133 note 2 See his letter to Northington, 9 Jan. 1766 (Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, no. 179), and his conversation with Irwin, General, reported in Grenville Papers, iv. 184Google Scholar.

page 134 note 1 Part. Hist., xxiv. 597 (18 02 1784)Google Scholar.

page 134 note 2 North came to believe that he had been in no sense the king's ‘tool’, but a House of Commons man who had entered into partnership or service with the king. ‘I was not, when I was honoured with office a Minister of Chance, or a Creature of whom Parliament had not experience: I was found among you when I was so honoured: I had been long known to you. In consequence I obtained your support; when that support was withdrawn, I ceased to be a Minister: I was the Creature of Parliament in my rise; when I fell, I was its victim’ (North's speech on parliamentary reform, 7 May 1783, printed in Wyvill's, Political Papers, ii. 664Google Scholar). This was a gross oversimplification; but there was in it an element of truth, which explains why North was always so much more sensitive than George III to defeats in the House of Commons. See their correspondence, in Fortescue, op. cit., nos. 1405–6, 2181–2, 2292, 2295, 2322, 2535–6, 2986–7, 2991, 3568.

page 134 note 3 North to George III, 18 March 1782, printed by Fortescue, op. cit., no. 3566.

page 135 note 1 There are some scornful references to him in Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766, ed. Sedgwick, (especially pp. 26, 28, 37)Google Scholar.

page 135 note 2 James, second earl Waldegrave, , Memoirs from 1754 to 1758, p. 4Google Scholar.

page 135 note 3 Conversation with Carteret, reported many years later by Shelburne (Fitzmaurice, Lord, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 2nd ed., 1912, i. 37Google Scholar). Naturally there were some questions upon which it was impossible for any-body to dictate even to George II—for instance, the choice of his A.D.C.s or his Bedchamber (Yorke, P. C., Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, Cambridge, 1913, ii. 172, 224–5Google Scholar). But Charles Fox himself never pretended that the king had no sphere within which his wishes must prevail: see his letter of 17 June 1783 to Nbrthington, in which he appears to acquiesce in George III's refusal to oblige the ministers by making peers, and defends their decision not to make an issue of the question of the Prince of Wales's allowance. ‘Everybody’, he says, ‘will not see the distinction between this and political points so strongly as the Ministers have done’ (Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ii. 116–18).

page 136 note 1 Yorke, , op. cit., ii. 97Google Scholar. Ecclesiastical affairs illustrate well the respective strength of the king's and the minister's will-power. Here, as ProfessorSykes, N. has shown (in his article on ‘The Duke of Newcastle as Ecclesiastical Minister’, Eng. Hist. Rev., (vii (1942), 5984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the king made a lot of fuss, but Newcastle nearly always got his way in the end.

page 136 note 2 Yorke, , op. cit., ii. 248Google Scholar; Namier, L. B., England in the Age of the Americqn Revolution, p. 49Google Scholar.

page 137 note 1 Yorke, , op. cit., ii. 388, 401–5Google Scholar.

page 137 note 2 Henry Fox to Strange, 10 June 1757, printed by Ilchester, , Henry Fox, first Lord Holland, ii. 57Google Scholar; Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of George II (1846 edn.), iii. 28Google Scholar. (This also rests on Fox's authority.)

page 137 note 3 Parliamentary History, xxiv..577 (King's message), 617 (Dolben), 740–2 (Dundas).

page 137 note 4 This was George II's opinion (Waldegrave, , Memoirs, p. 132Google Scholar)and Henry Fox's, (Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, p. 76)Google Scholar.

page 138 note 1 Fitzmaurice, , op. cit., ii. 256Google Scholar. The search can be followed at length in George III's Correspondence (ed. Fortescue), nos. 4133 to 4268.

page 138 note 2 One cannot, however, be sure that this was the king's doing. Rockingham and Fox may have thought that enlarging and defining the powers of the cabinet as an institution was the best way of tying the king down. For example, Fox claimed that the cabinet should choose a successor to a dead prime minister—a power which it had only once exercised (in 1754) at the king's request and somewhat to the distaste of the lord chancellor.

page 139 note 1 As late as May 1763 he felt very nervous without Bute to hold his hand (Sedgwick, , op. cit., p. 234Google Scholar).

page 139 note 2 This, I think, is a fair deduction from the paucity of such interferences in his published correspondence (of which, however, much has been destroyed) before 1768. See also Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of George III (ed. Russell, Barker), viii. 66Google Scholar.

page 139 note 3 George II's abortive attempt to install Compton in the supreme power was far less objectionable: Compton may have been a windbag, but he was Speaker of the House of Commons, which was still reckoned a high political office.

page 140 note 1 See their correspondence and Elliot's, Gilbert memoranda in Elliot, G. F. S., The Border Elliots (Edinburgh 1897), pp. 342–65Google Scholar, supplemented by Namier, , England in the Age of the American Revolution, pp. 119–21Google Scholar; also George III's outbursts against Pitt's, ‘ingratitude’, Sedgwick, , op. c'u., pp. 1719, 34–5, 45Google Scholar.

page 140 note 2 Devonshire to Fox, 14 Oct. 1762, printed by Ilchester, , Henry Fox, first Lord Holland, ii. 203Google Scholar.

page 140 note 3 Burke's, Works (1852 edn.), iii. 118–19, 134–5Google Scholar. Incidentally this resemblance seems to me to show that the doctrines of the Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents were not merely, as Mr. Sedgwick calls them, ‘literary afterthoughts’; they were rationalizations of the prejudices which people like Devonshire had long held.

page 141 note 1 Hist. MSS. Comm., Lonsdale MSS., p. 131.

page 141 note 2 No doubt it satisfied Fox, emotionally and financially, to support Bute and George III against Pitt and Newcastle; but I have little doubt of the sincerity of his agreement with them on this point (Ilchester, , op. cit., ii. 196Google Scholar; Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, p. 76). Fox was believed, much earlier than this, to hold ‘arbitrary principles’ and to have derived them from the duke of Cumberland. There is very little evidence that Fox desired to set up a ‘military tyranny’. I think it more likely that he derived his ideas of rigid parliamentary discipline under the minister of the king's choice from his old master Sir Robert Walpole or from his friend Carteret, who appears to have had illusions, in the 1740's, about the value of the Crown's support to a politician.

page 141 note 3 This was probably his original intention, though I am less certain that it was the king's. This is not the place to discuss the duration of Bute's influence. It is clear that he was seeing the king almost daily in November 1764 (Sedgwick, , op. cit., pp. 239–40Google Scholar), but it does not follow that he was exercising any political influence.

page 142 note 1 Possibly Addington should be treated as a non-politician, though the Speakership had not yet ceased altogether to be considered as a high political office. In any case, the dead set of some politicians against Addington is comparable to the dead set against Bute.

page 142 note 2 ‘Have we really Monarchy in this Kingdom,’ cried Bute, exasperated by Granby's refusal to serve under an administration which countenanced Lord George Sackville, ‘or is there only a puppet dressed out with regal robes to serve the purposes of every interested man’ (Fitzmaurice, , op. cit., i. 168Google Scholar). Sackville in his turn refused to let his son-in-law serve under the younger Pitt, because the Foreign Secretary, Carmarthen, Lord, had once insulted him by a motion in the House of Lords (Hist. MSS. Comm., Stopford-SackvilU MSS., i. 82)Google Scholar.

page 143 note 1 MrSedgwick, Romney, in his introduction (pp. cit., pp. xix–xlii)Google Scholar, has most ingeniously traced the growth of this legend; but that does not prove that George III did not read the book, which he might naturally do, as it dealt with the duties of his station and was dedicated to his father. He might, however, equally have derived his ideas, which were commonplaces at the time? from the Rev. Brown's, J. celebrated Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London, 1758)Google Scholar; see, especially, i. 108, ii. 202.

page 143 note 2 The most serious attempt to compose such a ministry—that of Chatham in 1766—was accompanied by a phenomenal expenditure on pensions, since there were not enough offices to go round.

page 143 note 3 Similar divisions produced similar political anarchy between 1801 and 1812.

page 144 note 1 It is not certain what Chatham thought about it himself. At one stage he was nettled by Charles Townshend's indiscipline, but later he seems to have thought it right for the ministry to throw this question at the House of Commons without giving it a lead; see his letter in Grafton's, Autobiography (ed. Anson, ), pp. 111–12, 116–17Google Scholar, and his similar advice to Shelburne, , on another subject, Chatham Correspondence, iii. 215Google Scholar. But for the fact that Chatham soon afterwards went out of his mind, one would say that he had some archaic idea that there was no need for ministers to agree beforehand on questions that were to come before the House of Commons; this would accord with his practice in the 1750's.

page 144 note 2 No doubt the passage in Observations on a late Publication intitled ‘The Present State of the Nation’ (Works, 1852 edn., iii. 100–1)is meant for Grafton.

page 145 note 1 The affair of Lord Edgecumbe's dismissal is discussed by Winstanley, D. A., Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 7586Google Scholar.

page 145 note 2 Collective resignation was the weapon by which the Pelham ministry had imposed its will on George II in 1746, and Newcastle had been on the brink of arranging another (which was, significantly, to have begun with Rockingham) in June 1757, when the king saved him the trouble by yielding. Some of Newcastle's followers (Rockingham, once again, to the fore) affronted George III by resigning in November 1762 as a protest against the peace and the dismissal of the duke of Devonshire (which was, itself, prob-ably meant to show that the king was not to be impressed by resignations). Curiously enough Chatham, who withstood the collective resignation of Rockingham's followers in November 1766, eagerly hastened the resignation of Granby, Camden and others in January 1770, in order to bring down the tottering ministry, Grafton (Chatham Correspondence, iii. 388–9, 392, 394, 398)Google Scholar.

page 146 note 1 There are traces of such asides to Grenville, against Bedford, , 02 1764 (Grenville Papers, ii. 489, 493)Google Scholar, to Northington against Chatham (Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, no. 462); to Northington against Grafton and Conway (ibid., no. 176); to Grafton against the Bedfords (ibid., no. 674); to North against Germain (ibid., no. 2202); to North against Sandwich (ibid., no. 2548); and, finally, a whole stream of correspondence with Jenkinson and Robinson about North, which is discussed by ProfessorButterfield, in George III, Lord North and the People, pp. 3147Google Scholar. Much of this is good-natured and even well-meant, but one can understand how a suspicious man like George Grenville would come to think that George III's maxim was Divide et impera (Harris, G., Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, London, 1847, iii. 454Google Scholar). In some instances (for example, George Ill's treatment of Rockingham and Shelburne in 1782), this suspicion was clearly justified.

page 147 note 1 Correspondence of King George III (ed. Fortescue), nos. 333–5.

page 147 note 2 Grenville Papers, iv. 66.

page 147 note 3 Pad. Hist., xxiv. 222.

page 147 note 4 Correspondence of King George III (ed. Fortescue, ), nos. 4236, 4268 (pp. 320–1)Google Scholar. Grenville, Lord acted likewise in 1806, but met with less objection (Hist. MSS. Comtn., Dropmore MSS., viii. 2)Google Scholar.

page 147 note 5 A supposed phrase of George Grenville, quoted by Fox, Charles in the House of Commons, 17 12 1783 (Pad. Hist., xxiv. 213)Google Scholar.

page 148 note 1 Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, nos. 703, 103.

page 148 note 2 George III often had great difficulty in mastering the expression of his emotions and often made great efforts to do so; for this laudable attempt to comport himself as a constitutional monarch should do, he was somewhat unreasonably blamed by the elder Pitt, who compared him to his disadvantage with ‘the late good old King’. No doubt it was just because George IFs sallies were so spontaneous that nobody except Newcastle took any notice of them.

page 148 note 3 Bedford's, memorandum in Bedford Papers, ed. Russell, Lord John, iii. 289Google Scholar; the picturesque language comes at third hand from Newcastle's, Narrative of Changes in the Ministry (ed. Bateson, Mary, 1898), p. 22Google Scholar.

page 148 note 4 George III's letter to Temple, 1 April 1783, in Correspondence (ed. Fortescue), no. 4272; Fox to Northington, 17 June, and Loughborough, to Fox, , 08 1783, in Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ii. 118, 205Google Scholar.

page 149 note 1 Fitzroy, Charles to Grafton, , 29 05 1765Google Scholar, in Grafton's, Autobiography, p. 51Google Scholar

page 149 note 2 Albemarle to Grafton, 19 June 1765, ibid., p. 83.

page 149 note 3 This story is recounted at third hand (from the king through the duke of Cumberland) in Newcastle's, Narrative (ed. Bateson, ), p. 18Google Scholar. But it is certain that Grenville presented the conditions; see the king's memoranda, printed by Fortescue as no. 139 and 141 of the Correspondence.

page 149 note 4 Correspondence of King George III (ed. Fortescue), no. 3654.

page 149 note 5 Hist. MSS. Comm., Dropmore MSS., viii. 2, 7–8.

page 150 note 1 This is why the king was in the weakest position when the old ministry had already resigned before the negotiation, as in 1782, 1783, arid 1806.

page 150 note 2 George III's correspondence with North in 1778–9 shows how much importance he attached to having a lord chancellor in office to conduct such a negotiation (Correspondence, ed. Fortescue, nos. 2310, 2336, 2354).

page 150 note 3 Pitt, to Shelburne, , 12 1765, Chatham Correspondence, ii. 359–60Google Scholar; Rockingham, to Grafton, , 16 07 1767Google Scholar, printed by Fortescue, Correspondence of King George III, no. 547, II.

page 150 note 4 Richmond, to Fox, , 7 02 1779, in Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, i. 213–20Google Scholar.

page 150 note 5 Correspondence of King George III, ed. Fortescue, nos. 3627, 3632, 3639.

page 150 note 6 Ibid., nos. 4210, 4236; Portland to Sydney, 15 Feb. 1784, in Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ii. 235; Portland to Fox, 24 Feb, 1784, ibid., ii. 238–40.

page 150 note 7 Hist, MSS, Comm., Dropmore MSS., vii. 118.