George III and the politicians (3): the victory of Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger
Public Domain

The Rockingham administration

As noted briefly in the previous post, on 27 March 1782 Lord Rockingham became Prime Minister for the second time, following Lord North’s resignation and the Earl of Shelburne’s inability to form a government. After sixteen years in the political wilderness, his moment had come. Rockingham was First Lord of the Treasury, and Shelburne and Charles James Fox Secretaries of State. Shelburne was responsible for colonial affairs, Fox for foreign affairs – making him Britain's first Foreign Secretary. Burke had to content himself with the non-Cabinet job of Paymaster of the Forces. 

The new government brought in some important reforms, most notably Burke’s Civil Establishment Bill removing 134 royal household officers, twenty-two of them coming with a seat in Parliament and to restrict the Civil List to £900,000 per annum. It was a major achievement to carry this measure in the face of the court’s hostility and it helped to weaken the influence of the monarchy. 

The Rockingham government was always potentially unstable, because of the king’s hostility and because of divisions within the government. In particular, Fox and Shelburne disliked each other intensely and Fox and Rockingham believed that Shelburne was the king’s spy in the government.

Ministers quarrelled over the peace negotiations. As Foreign Secretary, Fox was negotiating a treaty with France and Spain, while Shelburne dealt with America. This proved a powerful source of conflict. Fox wished to give unconditional independence to the Americans, Shelburne wanted more favourable terms for Britain.

Matters came to a head at a cabinet meeting on 30 June when Fox gave notice that he would resign if the Americans were not granted independence unconditionally in advance of the peace treaty. This move would have put the peace negotiations squarely within his department. This might not, on its own, have led to a crisis, but the moment of decision was forced on the government by the death of Rockingham the next day.

The Shelburne administration

William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
Public Domain

On the same afternoon that he heard of Rockingham’s death, the king wrote to Shelburne asking him to form a ministry, much to the dismay of Fox. He was now the leader of the Whig party in the Commons (the nominal head of the party was the Duke of Portland) he had believed that he or one of his followers might be Prime Minister. On 3 July he told the king that he must appoint someone who had the confidence of his group – this was a bold challenge to the royal prerogative and was taken as such by the king. 

Fox was putting forward the novel constitutional doctrine that the Cabinet not the monarch should chose the prime minister. When it was clear that the King was determined to appoint Shelburne, he took his place on the back benches.

The Shelburne ministry was formed on 9 July after nine days of uncertainty. The government was to last a mere eight months, for five of which Parliament was in recess. Shelburne’s strongest card was his new Chancellor of the Exchequer, the twenty-three year old William Pitt the younger.

As the leader of the opposition in the Commons, Fox presided over the smallest of the three parties - Foxites, Shelburnites, Northites - and his service as Foreign Secretary had made him deeply unpopular with the king. His main asset was his extraordinary debating ability, only matched by that of Pitt on the government benches.

But much of Fox’s time was taken up with his raffish private life Between the summer and autumn of 1783 he abandoned Mary Robinson for Mrs Elizabeth Armistead, who had also been the Prince of Wales’s mistress. By the end of the year it was clear that he was deeply in love with his ‘dearest Liz’. He was beginning to settle down.

Elizabeth Armistead
Courtesan, actress - and then wife
Public Domain

Shelburne’s government was weak and unstable. He had the King’s support but his government was outnumbered in the Commons by the opposition members. His only asset was the well-known hostility between Fox and North. But early in 1783 it was clear that they were sinking their differences and prepared to combine to bring down the government. North's understanding with Fox was agreed on 14 February and announced in parliament on the 18th.

On 21 February the government was defeated in the Commons by 224 to 208 on the peace negotiations. Like North in 1782 Shelburne took defeat by a Commons majority as a sufficient cause for resignation. On 24 February he resigned and took Pitt into opposition with him. 

This is the moment, recorded in the Royal Archives and now on-line, when the king contemplated abdication if Fox was brought into government. On 5 March Fox offered further provocation when he declared in a debate that he

ever would maintain that His Majesty in his choice of ministers ought not to be influenced by his personal favour alone, but by the public voice, by the sense of Parliament, and by the sense of his people.

Such was the king’s weakness that he had to swallow his outrage. On 12 March he sent for North and told him that he accepted Fox’s presence in a government that would nominally be headed by the duke of Portland. Fox wrote:

The King does this de la plus mauvais grace possible; and there are several unsatisfactory circumstances.

The Fox-North Coalition

The new government, which was formed on 1 April, was greeted with derision and incredulity – Fox and North had made too many bitter speeches against each other in the past to be credible as a partnership. Reformers were especially outraged. 

However, the Coalition was also the logical outcome of the state of parties at Westminster. Fox had 90 supporters, North 120; Shelburne about 140. From Fox’s point of view a North-Shelburne alliance would undo all hopes of reform and had to be stopped at all costs. But though these were logical calculations, the coalition was seen by contemporaries and has been seen by posterity, as an extraordinary piece of political cynicism.

James Gillray's  'A Block for the Wigs' (1783') captures the cynicism
about the Coalition. Fox is at right, followed by North, and then by
Burke, with a skeleton leg. George III is the blockhead in the centre.

The king was especially outraged and was determined to make life difficult for the Coalition – for example by refusing to create peers. In June Parliament debated the prospect of giving a regular income to the Prince of Wales, now approaching his 21st birthday. When the government suggested £100,000 a year, the king was horrified and Fox began to fear that the dispute would bring down the government. A compromise was agreed £50,000 p.a.from the civil list plus the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall, with the prince to have his own house (Carlton House). But the king could not forgive the coalition and declared that he ‘wished himself eighty or ninety or dead’.

In September the definitive peace treaties were signed with France, Spain and America. In November the government brought in an India Bill, which had been drafted by Burke in consultation with Fox. The most controversial aspect of the bill was the proposal to replace the Court of Directors and transfer the political responsibilities of the East India Company to a body of commissioners sitting in London, appointed first by Parliament and subsequently by the Crown. All the Commissioners were named in the bill – and all were supporters of the Coalition. Even Fox’s modern apologists have trouble defending this partisan bill.

When the bill was debated in Parliament, Fox made eloquent speeches but was condemned as ‘Carlo Khan’ in George Sayers’ caricature. 

'Carlo Khan's Triumphal Entry
into Leadenhall Street'

On 3 December the bill passed the Commons. On 9 December, as the Lords debated the first reading of the bill, the King chose this moment to plan his coup against the Coalition. On 11 December he made it known that those peers who voted for the bill

‘were not only not his friends, but he should consider them his enemies’.

This was a bombshell. George was gambling on his position and if the Lords voted for the bill he planned to abdicate and retire to Hanover. On 17 December the Lords rejected the bill by a majority of 19. In the Commons a furious Fox laid the blame for the defeat at the door of

‘the illegal and extraordinary exertions of the royal prerogative’.

On 18 December the government’s resignation was hourly expected. At midnight, while Portland, Fox and North were in conference, messengers arrived from the king asking them to deliver up their seals of office. On the next day the twenty-four-year old Pitt kissed hands as Prime Minister.

Pitt’s minority government

Pitt knew his government would only be temporary – he was outnumbered 2 to 1 in the Commons. He had great difficulty forming a government and his cabinet did not take shape until 23 December. The Whig hostess Mrs Crewe voiced the conventional wisdom when she described his government as a ‘mince-pie administration’ that would be gone in the New Year.

But in the recess, the Crown built up its powers of patronage. When parliament met, the government lost many divisions but Pitt kept his nerve and did not resign. In the meantime congratulatory addresses to the king poured in. The Opposition began to falter and lose confidence. On 1 March the Morning Chronicle wrote:

The unshaken firmness of the Ministry under the actual tortures of an experiment which, until these six weeks, would have been thought an idle dream if any man had pretended to foresee it, engages respect.

On 21 March Pitt decided to dissolve Parliament. On 24 March the king announced the end of the session. (The Great Seal was stolen - dirty tricks? - and another had to be made.)

The election of 1784

Thanks to the usual government pre-election manoeuvres (securing pocket boroughs) there was little doubt that Pitt would win the election. But the result was nevertheless a triumph, with Pitt making seventy gains. But an even more remarkable factor was the number of petitions that poured in supporting the King and condemning Fox. 


The election lasted five weeks, the last return coming in from London on 7 May. It aroused unprecedented interest with the number of caricatures reaching unprecedented proportions (many paid for by the government). Many Opposition members (notably the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord John Cavendish) lost their seats (‘Fox’s Martyrs’). [Cavendish had held York since 1768 and thought it was a safe seat.] Thomas Coke lost Norfolk. One Whig politician wrote to another:

We are cut up root and branch. The country is utterly mad for prerogative.

Fox only held onto his Westminster seat after the Duchess of Devonshire’s controversial canvassing. 

Thomas Rowlandson depicts the Duchess kissing a butcher
One of the many scurrilous caricatures attacking
Georgiana.

His Westminster election began on 1 April and finished on 17 May. The final result was: Admiral Samuel Hood 6,694; Fox, 6,223; Sir Cecil Wray, 5,998.

The election brought a decisive end to two years of political instability and set the tone for politics for the rest of the eighteenth century. Pitt was Prime Minister, Fox (in effect) Leader of the Opposition; the king had become popular and the Prince of Wales was unpopular!