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‘We are in the midst of a contest, and I think, approaching to a crisis.’

WILLIAM PITT, NOVEMBER 1783

‘The deliberations of this evening must decide whether we are to be henceforward free men or slaves; whether this House is the palladium of liberty or the engine of despotism.’

CHARLES JAMES FOX, 17 DECEMBER 1783

PITT AND HIS COMPANIONS returned to Dover from their sojourn in France on 24 October 1783. Within weeks they would be embroiled in one of the great constitutional crises of British history, and within months Pitt himself would exercise a domination of British politics which would span more than two decades and end only with his death. Yet few observers could have charted the course which would bring the ungainly and no doubt weary-looking young man making his way across Kent to London to such pre-eminence in so short a time, for no one could foresee with confidence the results of a head of state mounting a political coup d’état against his own government.

Pretyman tells us that Pitt returned to England ‘with an intention of resuming his profession of the law, if there should appear a fair probability of the administration being permanent’.¹ In fact, he was feverishly busy with political meetings immediately on his return to London, knowing that something dramatic could happen in the coming session. By 3 November he was writing to Lord Mahon that he had hoped to visit him at his country house, Chevening, ‘but I have had so much to do ever since I have been in town that I have found it impossible … Time is every day more precious … I trust you will be in town in a very few days, for there are several things in which I am quite at a loss without you.’² While Pitt prepared for the meeting of Parliament in London, Temple called other opponents of the government together at his own country residence, Stowe, mindful of the King’s request to be ready to rescue him from his ‘thraldom’. Nothing in the summer had changed George III’s attitude. Fox had hoped that ‘if we last the Summer, the Public will think that the King has made up his mind to bear us, and this opinion alone will destroy the only real cause of weakness that belongs to us’.³ But as Wraxall observed, George allowed his Ministers to ‘dictate measures; gave them audiences, signed papers, and complied with their advice; but he neither admitted them to his confidence nor ceased to consider them as objects of his individual aversion’.⁴

George III opened the new session of Parliament on 11 November, dutifully reading from the throne the speech written for him by the Ministers he hated. Opposition spokesmen found little to criticise in this broad statement of government intention: in the Lords Temple criticised the state of government finances, and in the Commons Pitt pointed out that the definitive peace treaties were almost identical to the much-criticised provisional articles of peace which he and Shelburne had defended. There was nothing at this stage to vote against or object to, and Pitt wrote to his mother that night: ‘We have to-day heard the King’s Speech, and voted the Address without any opposition. Both were so general that they prove nothing of what may be expected during the Session. The East India business and the funds promise to make the two principal objects.’⁵

The ‘East India business’ would indeed provide the spark to ignite the coming conflagration. All were agreed that the methods by which Britain governed its Indian dominions must be reformed, but the disagreement about how to do so would be spectacular. In the days when ‘Diamond Pitt’ had made his fortune in Madras British affairs in India were controlled exclusively by the East India Company. Even then, the huge sums to be made from holding positions of influence in India made the Company’s affairs increasingly important in domestic British politics. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the designs of the French on developing an Indian empire made Indian affairs even more directly a matter of governmental concern. From 1751, when Robert Clive wrecked the plans of the French and succeeded in holding Arcot against an enemy army which outnumbered his by forty to one, British power and responsibilities in India grew rapidly. By 1754 Britain was sending regular troops to India rather than relying solely on those employed by the Company, and three years later Clive routed the French and their allies at the Battle of Plassey. In 1764 a hostile coalition of Indian Princes was similarly annihilated at the Battle of Buxar. Backed by conquering troops, the East India Company had acquired the power to nominate Indian rulers, depose local governments and expel foreign invasions. Originally established to conduct trade, the Company was now ruling an empire.

By the early 1770s the individuals within the East India Company controlled vast patronage and wealth, while the Company itself was virtually bankrupt as a result of taking on so many responsibilities at the same time as paying out huge dividends. In 1773 the government of Lord North introduced a Regulating Act to put the governing of British possessions in India more nearly within political control, creating a Governor General, a Council and a Supreme Court, and regulating the conduct of the Company’s business and behaviour. This system did not work, largely because the Council was usually at bitter loggerheads with the Governor General, Warren Hastings. In 1779, beset by internal divisions, Hastings had to face a wave of Indian revolts and the arrival of a new French fleet in the East at a time when no British reinforcements were available because of the war in America. He resolved the crisis with immense skill and ruthlessness, using, as one historian put it, ‘diplomacy, bribery, threats, force, audacity, and resolution’,⁶ demolishing every enemy and extending British power still further. In the process, and perhaps inevitably, he committed acts of retribution against enemies and paid vast sums of money to allies. Such tactics produced the desired result, but, when written down on paper in the House of Commons and examined by high-minded people who had never set foot in India, they seemed to have a doubtful ethical basis, to say the least.

In 1781 a Select Committee of the Commons was set up to investigate the judicial system of Bengal, numbering among its members Edmund Burke. Burke had become obsessed with Indian affairs, and would years later bring about the impeachment and trial of Warren Hastings. Now, as a member of the Fox—North government, he was able to frame a Bill which would bring true political control and accountability to Indian affairs. It was this Bill, the East India Bill, which an excited Charles James Fox presented to the House of Commons on 18 November 1783, a week after the opening of Parliament. And it was this Bill which, within a month, would bring down his government.

Ostensibly, the Bill was designed to separate the political and commercial functions of the Company. The key proposal was to create a Board of seven Commissioners, with great powers over the Company’s officers in India, and eight Assistants who would manage the Company’s commercial affairs. The Commissioners would be answerable to Parliament for their decisions, thereby creating the accountability hitherto missing. Crucially, they would also be appointed by Parliament. The Crown would neither appoint them, nor have the right to dismiss them. For Fox and Burke this proposal was perfectly natural: they had long criticised the extent of Crown patronage, and were clearly in favour of making the Company’s political actions accountable to Parliament. Surely, then, the Board must be appointed by Parliament. The storm of controversy this proposal would arouse lay in its practical effect: while Fox controlled the majority in Parliament these extremely powerful Commissioners would be nominated by him. Even if he left office thereafter, his appointees would still be in place, and because in practice their power would reach into commercial matters, they would control patronage and wealth on a scale which could rival that of the rest of the Kingdom combined.

We do not know whether this side-effect of the Bill was one of the principal objectives Fox and Burke had in mind, but we do know that they were alert to the controversy it would create. Fox said that the debates on the Bill would be ‘vigorous and hazardous’ and ‘of a very delicate nature’. Their strategy for getting it through was to take the moral high ground on Indian affairs, and to rush it through its parliamentary stages before concerted opposition to it could be mounted. In the opening debates on 18 and 27 November Fox argued that this business had forced itself upon him and upon the nation, since the ‘rapacity’ of the Company’s servants had produced ‘anarchy and confusion’. The government was called upon to save the Company from imminent bankruptcy. In the first debate Pitt responded that ‘Necessity was the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It was the argument of tyrants: it was the creed of slaves.’⁷ He called for more time to debate the Bill, and also for a ‘call of the House’ to take place two weeks later as, seeing his opportunity, he attempted to bring the country gentry to Parliament as soon as possible. Four days later he wrote to Rutland:

We are in the midst of a contest, and I think approaching to a crisis. The Bill which Fox has brought in relative to India will be, one way or other, decisive for or against the coalition. It is, I really think, the boldest and most unconstitutional measure ever attempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters and compacts, the immense patronage and influence of the East to Charles Fox, in or out of office. I think it will with difficulty, if at all, find its way through our House, and can never succeed in yours. Ministry trust all on this one die, and will probably fail … If you have any member within fifty or a hundred miles of you who cares for the Constitution or the country, pray send him to the House of Commons as quick as you can.⁸

Pitt was perceptive in his letter about the course events would now take, except in relation to the House of Commons, where he was far too optimistic: Fox was able to steamroller all before him. In the decisive Second Reading debate of 27 November, Pitt sought to whip up opposition with extreme language in denouncing the Bill – ‘One of the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming attempts at the exercise of tyranny that ever disgraced the annals of this or any other country’⁹ – but found himself defeated at the end of the day by 229 votes to 120. A triumphant Fox had won the votes and the arguments. As the Bill passed rapidly through its remaining stages in the Commons, Burke delivered his great tribute to the leadership of Fox: ‘He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory; he will remember that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph … He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long, he may do much; but here is the summit, – he never can exceed what he does this day.’¹⁰ This was classic Burke, emotional, grandiloquent, and completely carried away with the feelings of the moment, but it demonstrated the exultation now arising in the ranks of the government’s supporters. With three-figure majorities behind them in the Commons, and the knowledge that any eighteenth-century government was seldom defeated in the Lords, they thought they were home and dry. On 3 December Fox was even emboldened to announce the names of the prospective Commissioners. Needless to say, these were all supporters of the Fox – North coalition, including Lord North’s eldest son. The Chairman was to be Earl Fitzwilliam, nephew of the deceased Rockingham and another grandee of the Whigs. It was said with some justice that all the nominees were better known at Brooks’s than in India. Despite this confirmation that the personal patronage of Fox and his allies would be vastly extended, the opposition in the Commons had been vanquished, and Pitt did not even attend the final debates. On 9 December Fox himself carried the Bill to the House of Lords, accompanied by excited supporters and telling his friends that his majority in the Lords would be at least two to one.

In any normal parliamentary situation, Fox would indeed now have been assured of success. He had a large majority, his most controversial piece of legislation was nearly through, his power would shortly be greatly extended, and there was no sign of any dispute with the King. But this was not a normal situation. Beyond the debating chambers of Westminster, powerful forces began to stir. Initially taken by surprise, the Court of Proprietors of the East India Company now pulled themselves together, censured their Chairman for supporting Fox and petitioned Parliament to say that the Company was in a better financial position than the government had declared, and that the Bill amounted to a ‘total confiscation’ of its property. Newspapers began to attack the Bill, saying that if it passed Fox would be ‘the most dangerous subject in Europe’. Caricatures were published depicting a rampaging Fox taking the spoils to himself. Such opposition Fox knew about, and could live with, but he did not know of Temple’s memorandum to the King, delivered by Lord Thurlow on 1 December. In it, Temple warned George that the India Bill was ‘a plan to take more than half of the Royal power, and by that means to disable His Majesty for the rest of the reign’. He went on to consider how the passage of the Bill could be prevented, ruling out the long-disused royal prerogative of simply refusing assent to it: ‘The refusing the Bill, if it passes the Houses, is a violent means … An easier way of changing his Government would be by taking some opportunity of doing it, when, in the progress of it, it shall have received more discountenance than hitherto. This must be expected to happen in the Lords in a greater degree than can be hoped for in the Commons. But a sufficient degree of it may not occur in the Lords if those whose duty to His Majesty would excite them to appear are not acquainted with his wishes, and that in a manner which would make it impossible to pretend a doubt of it, in case they were so disposed.’¹¹ Stated much more bluntly, the King carried sufficient weight in the House of Lords to have the Bill defeated there, and then use that defeat as a reason for throwing out the government. He could only achieve this, however, if he made it absolutely clear to those Lords susceptible to his influence that this was his wish.

In league with Thurlow and Temple was John Robinson, the former government official who had managed a succession of elections for the Treasury, but whose opposition to the India Bill now led him to assist the opposition. He calculated that if the opposition was suddenly to be placed in government it would have 149 definite supporters in the Commons and 231 certain opponents, with 178 ‘hopeful’ or ‘doubtful’. These numbers were not encouraging, and were consistent with the large majorities Fox had enjoyed. Nevertheless, it was thought that a significant number of Members could be induced to change sides once the government itself had changed hands, and that if, additionally, an election were held, the new government could secure 253 supporters against 123 opponents. Such figures were highly speculative, and this was after all the same House of Commons in which it had not been possible to form an alternative government earlier in the year. Nevertheless, more was now at stake, and the opportunity to ditch the Fox – North coalition might not recur.

Whatever the calculations, Temple and Thurlow knew they could not succeed without the cooperation of Pitt, and that so far he had repeatedly refused to take office. On 9 December they approached him, using the ageing Lord Clarendon, a long-serving but middle-ranking Minister under North, as a go-between, since any meeting between the principal conspirators would have aroused suspicions. Clarendon recorded that he had been sent to find out ‘the sentiments of him, who must from the superiority of his talents and the purity of his character be a leader in this important business. He was found well disposed to the work and not deterred from the situation of things and the temper of men. He concurred in the opinion that there should be no dismission till a strong succession was secured, that the future plan should be well formed before the present was dissolved. He prudently asked if this overture proceeded from authority, and could be carried on through a proper and safe channel to the fountain head. Those judicious questions being answered in the affirmative, he said he would consider and consult on the matter, and that there should be no delay in speaking more positively on it.’¹²

By the eleventh Pitt was sending, through Clarendon, his advice on tactics to the King: ‘His opinion is to see by a division the force on each side in the House of Lords … The great Patriot’s sentiments should be known and enforced to all who, from their situation, affection or regard for his honour and for the constitution, ought to be attentive to them, no one who can be directly or indirectly influenced to do right should be left unreminded of the necessity to appear in numbers whenever the bill now depending is agitated. The passing it may change the nature of government, the rejecting it may lessen even to dissolution the power of those who formed it.’¹³

Pitt’s willing involvement confirmed the advice that George III had been given that ‘certain persons’ were ready ‘to receive the burthen’. On the same day the King gave Temple a card which stated:

His Majesty allowed Earl Temple to say, that whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as an enemy; and if these words were not strong enough, Earl Temple might use whatever words he might deem stronger and more to the purpose.¹⁴

The die was cast.

The King now summoned the Archbishop of Canterbury and told him to vote the opposite way on the India Bill to his previous disposition, an instruction to which the Archbishop dutifully adhered. Meanwhile, Temple made widespread and effective use of the royal card residing in his pocket. Confusion mounted rapidly: some of the King’s friends took Temple’s word on the King’s opinions, others refused to believe it. Ministers were caught completely unprepared. Portland, the nominal head of the government, ‘did not believe this report for some time as His Majesty had never expressed to him the slightest disinclination to give the Bill his full support, & even on the Friday when the Duke was with him did not give him the least hint of what had passed with Lord Temple’.¹⁵ News of the King’s views continued to spread, while both sides avoided discussing it publicly – the opposition because it would be accused of complicity in an unconstitutional manoeuvre, and the government because it did not want the rumour to be confirmed.

As the Lords debated the Bill on 15 December, and Fox and Pitt watched from the Bar of the House, Fox still expected a majority of twenty-five. George Rose even overheard one government supporter saying to another, ‘I wish I were as sure of the kingdom of heaven as I am of our carrying the Bill this evening.’¹⁶ In fact, the King’s intervention had caused at least twenty-seven members of the Lords to change sides, and late that night they inflicted their first defeat on the Bill, by eighty-seven votes to seventy-nine. Fox was outraged, writing to his mistress Mrs Armistead: ‘We are beat in the H. of Lds by such treachery on the part of the King & such meanness on the part of his friends in the H. of Lds as one could not expect even from him or them.’¹⁷ Two days later, on 17 December, both Houses met for the climactic debates. In the House of Lords the India Bill was formally and finally thrown out by an increased opposition majority of nineteen. Down the corridor in the House of Commons, government supporters raged against the actions of the opposition, arguing that if people other than Ministers influenced the actions of the King, then Ministers were placed in an impossible position. They passed a resolution that to report any opinion of the King in order to influence debates was ‘a high crime and misdemeanour’, and another launching an inquiry to begin the following week. Fox thundered forth his denunciation of what had happened: ‘The deliberations of this evening must decide whether we are to be henceforward free men or slaves; whether this House is the palladium of liberty or the engine of despotism; whether we are prospectively to exercise any functions of our own, or to become the mere echo of secret influence.’ The Lords, he said, had ‘forfeited by their conduct every claim to the character of gentlemen, and degraded the characteristic independence of the peerage as well as vilified the British Legislature in the eyes of all Europe’.¹⁸

While it was clear to all involved that the King’s intervention in the House of Lords had been decisive, it was of huge importance to Pitt and his colleagues that they were not implicated in a conspiracy to use ‘secret influence’ and to encourage arguably unconstitutional action. Temple had become trapped in verbal contortions in the Lords when questioned on his role, and had ended by owning up to a meeting with the King, while not confirming what was said. Pitt, the prize now within his grasp, took an approach that was far simpler, as well as ruthlessly dishonest. The rumour, he said, was simply ‘the lie of the day’, and he could not believe that such importance had been ‘ever before imparted to mere rumour and hearsay’. Throughout the controversies of the coming months he would maintain that he knew of no plan to unseat the previous government, an assertion believed by many of his contemporaries and all of his earliest biographers for many decades after his death.

On 18 December Pitt and Temple had audiences with the King. Pitt indicated his readiness to take office at the head of a new government, and at midnight that night Portland, Fox and North were meeting together when messengers arrived from the King asking them to surrender their seals of office. ‘I choose this method,’ the King wrote to North, ‘as Audiences on such occasions must be unpleasant.’¹⁹ On Friday, 19 December 1783 a packed House of Commons watched as Pitt’s friend Pepper Arden rose and moved a new writ for an election in the Borough of Appleby: ‘In the room of the Rt Hon William Pitt, who, since his election, has accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.’^* The massed ranks of the supporters of the Fox – North coalition, now gathering on the opposition benches, burst into laughter. For one thing, they were laughing at Arden’s high-pitched voice, and for another at the appointment of a twenty-four-year-old to be the First Minister of the Kingdom. More ominously, they were laughing with confidence. As Fox put it: ‘We are so strong … I think we shall destroy them almost as soon as they are formed.’ Pitt would become Prime Minister with a large majority of the House of Commons determined to force his immediate removal.

Why did Pitt decide to take office in December 1783, having refused to do so earlier in the year? He had previously ruled it out on the grounds that he could not be sure of a majority in the House of Commons, and that was as true now as it had been before. What had changed?

There were two major differences between this situation and his previous opportunities to lead a government. The first was that the likely balance of power between Pitt as Prime Minister on the one hand and George III on the other had changed. Had Pitt taken office in March 1783, he would have done so at the whim of the King, and to a large extent as a creature of the King’s making. Having made him, the King could have unmade him, by trying to dictate policy, control appointments, or at some stage dismissing him and turning back to Lord North, or even Shelburne, or some other figure who could cobble together an administration. The circumstances of December 1783 were quite different. The King had declared political war on a majority of the House of Commons and on almost all its senior figures, including the entire parties of Charles James Fox and Lord North. The abuse of royal power he had perpetrated was now under ferocious attack in that assembly. In this situation, it was not merely desirable to George III that Pitt should lead the government; it was indispensable to him. He literally could not do without the one man who could take on all comers in the House of Commons and at the very least hold his own. And such was the enmity now created between the King and the new opposition that he would not be able to let them back into office for a very long time, thus securing Pitt’s position for the future, if only he could get through the first few months. Pitt knew all this, and he also knew that if he could succeed in outwitting the hostile majority in the Commons and somehow entrench himself in office, his achievement would have been so great that his political following would be strong and his authority hard to challenge.

It was because of these realities that Pitt was able to take office on his own terms in a manner he could not have insisted upon earlier that year. He had made clear in the summer that he would only serve as First Lord of the Treasury if he could pursue his cherished goal of parliamentary reform, a project to which George III was unremittingly hostile. Now indeed he took office with the apparent understanding that although he could not expect the King and other diehard traditionalists such as Thurlow actually to support parliamentary reform, they would not actively prevent him from bringing it forward. Hence Pitt could take charge in Downing Street knowing that he had a large measure of freedom of action, and that the King’s need to keep him in office would allow him to maintain that freedom.

The second major difference between March and December 1783 was that matters had truly come to a head. Pitt’s attack on the India Bill as ‘the exercise of tyranny’ had been wild exaggeration, but there is no doubt that the successful passage of the Bill would have helped to cement the Fox – North coalition into power, and brought a great deal of valuable patronage under their control. If the government was not thrown out now, it might be much harder to do so later. A ready pretext might not easily recur, and the combination of powerful conspirators who brought about the coup in the House of Lords that December might have disintegrated if it was not put to use. Since Pitt was only twenty-four it would be an exaggeration to say that this was ‘now or never’, but he must have recognised that it might be ‘now or not for a very long time’. The stakes were high enough for the risk to be worth taking.

And risk it was. Given the constitutional precedents and conventions prevailing at the time, no substantive defence of the King’s action was possible. From 1688 onwards it had been understood that the King would operate only through his Ministers, who could then be held accountable in Parliament and who needed a majority in the House of Commons to support them. Now the King had acted through other politicians in order to depose his Ministers, and had proceeded to appoint a new government to which a majority of the House of Commons was clearly opposed. It is no wonder that Fox and the Whigs railed against this outrage: not only had they been deprived of office, but the constitutional settlement they had been brought up to believe was sacrosanct had been comprehensively violated. Wraxall admitted that the King’s action ‘appears at first sight subversive of every principle of political freedom’, but went on to make the one real defence, albeit in exaggerated language, of what the King had done: ‘We must, however, candidly allow that he was not bound to observe any measures of scrupulous delicacy with men who had entered his Cabinet by violence, who held him in bondage, and who meditated to render that bondage perpetual.’²⁰ In other words, the constitution was breaking down, and the Ministers were themselves violating it by proposing greatly to extend their own power, an action against which the King had to defend himself.

It would turn out that a great majority of opinion in the country would agree with this latter defence of the King, and would give strong support to his actions and his new Prime Minister, notwithstanding the fact that he had broken all the rules. George III would join a long line of political rulers, which now stretches from Julius Caesar to Charles de Gaulle, in succeeding in taking unconstitutional action because he enjoyed great popular support for it. But this was far from apparent to the King’s friends as Pitt’s appointment was announced on 19 December, and the opposition benches rocked with laughter. Those who contemplated joining Pitt in office had to reckon with the likelihood that when the Commons met again in January it would vote them straight out of office with endless motions of no confidence and a refusal to authorise taxes. It would not take many weeks for a Commons majority to make the governing of the country impossible, which was the whole reason governments required a majority in the House of Commons in the first place. Worse still, the talk of ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ raised the possibility of the impeachment of those who took office in these circumstances, and trials conducted by Parliament.

Veterans of politics blanched when faced with such prospects. It was the hope of many, evidently including Temple, that Pitt would ask the King to dissolve Parliament and call an immediate general election, in which all the advantages of incumbency and Treasury money would rest with Pitt and the King’s friends. Certainly this is what Fox and North expected him to do. He did not do so. There were several reasons for this. First, an eighteenth-century general election needed ‘preparation’, with careful arrangement of candidates and money. There had been no time to do this. Second, a Land Tax Bill had to be enacted by early January for the public finances to be secure. Third, the Parliament had four years yet to run, and early dissolutions were deeply unpopular with many independent and county Members who would face the huge expense of an early election. Pitt needed their support, and an election could have pushed them into hostility without depriving them of their seats. Fourth, a general election in the middle of a session, let alone in the middle of a Parliament, was without precedent since 1688 other than on the death of a monarch, and would add further to the doubtful constitutional basis of all that had gone before.

The most effective way, albeit an extremely difficult and hazardous one, to show that the new government was legitimate, was to win over a majority in the existing House of Commons. If that proved impossible, and the opposition succeeded in rendering government inoperable, then at least there would be a more convincing pretext for a general election, and opinion would be more likely to rally to the new government. Pitt’s strategy was therefore to construct a government from among the few people willing to serve, to attempt to win over a majority of the Commons by taking on the opposition, to tempt the opposition into intemperate measures if it continued in the majority, and then to call an election if really necessary, by which time opinion in the country would be more solidly on his side.

Fox’s strategy was also to avoid a dissolution, since that would bring the full weight of government influence on to Pitt’s side in an election. He would not immediately supply the pretext for an election by ‘stopping the supplies’, but he would take every other measure to humiliate Pitt and vote down whatever policies the new government attempted.

The stage was set for one of the great political confrontations of British history.

The early days of the battle were not auspicious for Pitt. He first attempted to cut through all the problems by sending a mutual friend, Lord Spencer, to ask Fox to join the government, but without Lord North and without the India Bill as proposed. A confident Fox turned this down flat. Two days after taking office Pitt received a body blow when Temple, who had taken office on 19 December as a Secretary of State, resigned on the twenty-first. Historians have never been able to agree on why he did so. Wraxall and other contemporary commentators thought it was because Pitt would not dissolve Parliament. Stanhope thought it was because the King had not recognised Temple’s previous service as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland or his recent services by elevating him to a dukedom. The explanation given by his brother, William Grenville, in the House of Commons at the time was that he wished to be ‘ready to meet any charge that shall be brought against him’, and would be able to ‘answer for his conduct whenever he shall hear the charge’.²¹ This has a ring of truth. Ministerial resignations usually take place for more than one reason, and it is likely that Temple simply took fright at the difficulty of the whole situation, with the added fear that he might be impeached. Dundas, eagerly taking office as Treasurer of the Navy, thought Temple was a ‘dammed dolter-headed coward’, and the King was still referring to ‘his base conduct’ six years later. Whatever the reason for it, this resignation left Pitt terribly exposed, deprived of his leading colleague and senior spokesman in the Lords. Pretyman recalled that: ‘This was the only event, of a public nature, which I ever knew disturb Mr. Pitt’s rest, while he continued in good health. Lord Temple’s resignation was determined upon at a late hour in the evening of the 21st; and when I went into Mr. Pitt’s bedroom the next morning he told me, that he had not had a moment’s sleep. He expressed great uneasiness at the state of public affairs; at the same time declaring his fixed resolution not to abandon the situation he had undertaken, but to make the best stand in his power, though very doubtful of the result.’²²

By the morning of Tuesday, 23 December, Wilberforce was writing in his journal: ‘Morning Pitt’s … Pitt nobly firm … Cabinet formed.’²³ It was indeed formed, but it was not very distinguished. Senior figures who had held high office in the past such as Lord Camden and the Duke of Grafton declined to take part in this risky enterprise. Pitt was able to form a small Cabinet of seven members, including himself: the conspirator Lord Thurlow back as Lord Chancellor, the trusty Gower as President of the Council, Pitt’s young friend the Duke of Rutland as Lord Privy Seal, Admiral Lord Howe as First Lord of the Admiralty and, as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, Lord Sydney and the Marquis of Carmarthen. The latter two held the two highest offices after Pitt and Thurlow, but were considered by William Grenville, who would one day succeed each of them, as ‘unequal to the most ordinary business of their own offices’.²⁴ Hardly any of the others could make an effective speech, and all of them except Pitt were in the House of Lords: the huge burden of debating in the House of Commons would fall almost entirely on Pitt himself.

At the more junior levels of the government Pitt relied on bringing in his young friends, with George Rose and Tom Steele as Secretaries to the Treasury, Henry Dundas as Treasurer of the Navy, William Grenville and Lord Mulgrave as Paymasters of the Forces and Richard Pepper Arden as Solicitor General. The list was completed by the Duke of Richmond as Master General of the Ordnance (he would later agree to join the Cabinet in the same role), Lloyd Kenyon as Attorney General and Sir George Yonge as Secretary at War.

This list of undistinguished peers and youthful companions was not immediately impressive. One commentator noted that the main attribute of the new government was its collective capacity for drink. Sir Gilbert Elliot dismissed the Ministers as ‘a set of children playing at ministers [who] must be sent back to school, and in a few days all will have returned to its former course’.²⁵ Of the many commentaries writing off the chances of the new government the most famous came from Fox’s friend Mrs Crewe, who said to Wilberforce: ‘Well, he [Pitt] may do what he likes during the holidays, but it will be only a mince-pie administration, depend on it.’²⁶ William Eden, at that stage still a political opponent, wrote that ‘They are in desperate straits even for Old men and Boys to accept situations.’²⁷ Pitt’s youth was again derided, with his opponents composing a jingle called ‘Billy’s Too Young to Drive Us’, and even Robinson, now advising him on the parliamentary numbers, describing him as ‘a delicate high spirited mind, beset by Boys, Theoreticks and prejudiced persons’.²⁸ Pitt’s position was seen as weak by most observers, and hopeless by some. As the Commons rose for the Christmas recess, Fox allowed the Land Tax Bill to pass, but in return extracted a promise that Parliament was not about to be dissolved. It would convene again on 12 January 1784. The battle for supremacy would then commence on the floor of the House of Commons.

^*Pitt’s re-election for Appleby, although a formality, was once again required by his acceptance of ministerial office.