In Dundas, Pitt had acquired a valuable ally who would stand by him for the rest of his life, but his decision that afternoon left his new lieutenant exasperated and demoralised, all the more so because he was assembling a dinner for leading peers and MPs that night for ‘hailing the new Minister’.8 Dundas told his brother, ‘How it will all end, God only knows. I don’t think I shall give myself any more trouble in the matter.’9 While Dundas explained the adverse turn of events to his disappointed dinner guests, Pitt proceeded to a long and difficult audience with the King. George III must have remembered the truculent refusal of Chatham to accept office on many occasions as he came up against the trenchant refusal of another Pitt. ‘Nothing’, the King wrote to Shelburne, ‘could get him to depart from the ground he took, that nothing less than a moral certainty of a majority in the House of Commons could make him undertake the task; for that it would be dishonourable not to succeed, if attempted.’10
For the third time in twelve months Westminster was enveloped by complete confusion as to who would next form the government of the country. When the Commons reassembled to hear details of the new government, they found no such government was in the making, although Pitt was still in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He would devote himself in the coming days to presenting and arguing for a Bill to provide for freer trade with America, leaving the King to renew his struggle to find a government that he thought he could live with. George sent first for Lord Gower, who could not muster enough support in the House of Commons, and then for Lord North, in an attempt to divide him from Fox. North refused the Treasury for himself, said he could support Pitt from the sidelines (the very thing Pitt would not rely on), and otherwise favoured his coalition with Fox. A struggle now commenced between George III and Fox which both saw, correctly, as being of major constitutional importance. The King decided he could only have North back in office with Fox alongside him if they would agree to serve under an independent figure, ‘a peer not connected with any of the strong parties that distract this kingdom’.11 This would greatly reduce the power of the Fox—North coalition, and would preserve the King’s prerogative of nominating his own First Minister. Fox, by contrast, wished to impose the Duke of Portland as First Lord of the Treasury, just as he had tried to do the previous July. This would put effective power into Fox’s own hands, and demonstrate that the ultimate decision on the composition and leadership of the government lay in the House of Commons. In the political parlance of the day, this was ‘storming the closet’.*
Given that North could not or would not serve without Fox, and that between them they commanded majority support in the Commons, there now arose a serious constitutional crisis. The wishes of the King and the opinions of a firm majority in Parliament were in direct conflict. For the King this was a far graver situation than the governmental crises of the previous year. When giving office to Rockingham, he had managed to sow division in the government at the outset and to maintain a loyal faction within it. This time he was presented with a previously agreed coalition which insisted on having its way and would not so easily be fooled again.
As the month of March wore on the King thrashed about for a way to avoid the inevitable, and the country had no effective government. Gower now bizarrely suggested turning to Thomas Pitt, Pitt’s cousin and veteran Member for Old Sarum, to form an administration. The King was prepared to try even this, asking for ‘Mr. Thomas Pitt or Mr. Thomas anybody’.12 Disappointingly for the embattled monarch, yet another Pitt showed sound self-knowledge, pronouncing himself ‘totaly [sic] unequal to public business, but most certainly unequal to a task like this’. Instead he recommended allowing the coalition to take office but withholding all royal favours from it, and warned the King that things were now getting dangerous, that this could be the most important decision of his reign, and that ‘every symptom of a distempered state seemed to prognosticate the danger of some convulsions if the temper of the times was not managed with prudence’.13
The King was not yet ready for prudence. He again talked of abdicating, and once more turned to Lord Gower to form a government, a project which, as before, turned out to be hopeless. By 12 March George was in his last ditch, sending for North and agreeing that Portland could be First Lord of the Treasury, and then trying to play the two of them off against each other while being as uncooperative as possible. The next ten days were taken up with highly complex negotiations, during which the King exasperated Portland by refusing to discuss the provisional appointment of Ministers until he could see the whole list, and the Fox and North parties fell out with each other over who was to have which jobs.
Even greater confusion would now commence. On 20 March Portland informed the King that the coalition could not after all agree on the composition of a government, largely because of the King’s insistence on trying to insert Lords Stormont and Thurlow into the Cabinet. Facing disaster, the Fox—North parties decided that night to swallow the pill and accept the appointment of Stormont, and the following day Portland was finally able to present an agreed list of the Cabinet to the King. George, however, had already seen a chance of rescue, and after Portland’s previous visit had written a one-line letter to Pitt:
Queen’s House, March 20 1783.
Mr. Pitt, I desire you will come here immediately.
G.R.14
Incredibly, the whole negotiation with Pitt now began again. Pitt saw the King and then met Dundas and Rutland. They agreed that if the coalition really could not sort itself out ‘he would accept of the Government, and make an administration … But he insisted to have the secret kept, because he was determined to have it distinctly ascertained before going again to the King, that North and Fox … had quarrelled among themselves about the division of the spoils.’ Since the coalition had, however, now ‘yielded the point in dispute’ to the King, it assumed that the Portland—Fox—North government would now take office. Despite this, George III continued to implore Pitt to take office and rescue him. Pitt wavered. Historians have found it difficult to explain his actions over the subsequent few days. The Commons was due to meet again on 24 March, and Fox and North looked forward to the House being resolute in their support. In the meantime, however, Pitt maintained his negotiations with the King, who therefore continued to defy the coalition and the Commons. At two o’clock in the morning on the day the Commons was to meet, Pitt summoned Dundas from his bed for urgent discussions. Dundas wrote to his presumably bewildered brother, ‘I flatter myself Mr. Pitt will kiss hands as First Lord of the Treasury on Wednesday next.’15 It was now Monday: Pitt and the King clearly had evolved a plan between them. The King wrote to Thurlow that ‘after every sort of chicanery from the Coalition’ he had broken off further negotiations ‘with the consent of Mr. Pitt’,16 and that he now expected him to take office. But whatever Pitt expected to happen in the House that afternoon to cement the arrangement did not come to pass. He seems to have been waiting for significant numbers in the Commons to ask him to take on the government. Unfortunately, while he waited for a lead from them, they awaited a lead from him. Most of the partisan Members of the House were in any case firmly committed to Fox and North, and the remainder were now confused by Pitt’s own speech.
He attacked the Fox—North coalition effectively: ‘there may be a seeming harmony while their interests point the same road, but only a similarity of ideas can render political friendships permanent’,17 and ‘Gentlemen talked of forgiving animosities and altering their political opinions with as much ease as they could change their gloves,’18 but the substance of his speech only fed the uncertainty. He did not directly oppose a motion for an address to the King demanding the formation of an administration, while some of his possible allies did oppose it, and although he stated that he knew of no arrangement for a new administration, he later said ‘he had some reason to imagine an administration would be formed, if not in one, at least, in two or three days’.19 Some Members thought that ‘the whole of Mr. Pitt’s conduct was inexplicable’.20 W
alpole called it ‘a long, guarded, and fluctuating speech’.21
In fact, Pitt was waiting for a great expression of support from the benches of the Commons. The King hoped that if Pitt said ‘that every man attached to this Constitution must stand forth … that He will meet with an applause that cannot fail to give him every encouragement’.22 Pitt himself later explained to Carmarthen that ‘he had in the debate on Monday … purposely endeavoured to collect the real wishes of the independent part of the House’, but had not found ‘any reason to expect a substantial support from thence’.23 He had thus been on a public fishing expedition in the House of Commons that day, but had found no one biting on the line. As a result he wrote to the King the next day ‘with infinite pain’, explaining that ‘it is utterly impossible for Him, after the fullest consideration of the actual situation of what passed yesterday in the House of Commons, to think of undertaking, under such circumstances, the Situation which Your Majesty has had the condescension and Goodness to propose to him’.24 It was the first demonstration of an enduring trait in Pitt’s character: his need to show his disinterestedness and dignity meant that he sought power by acclamation rather than being seen to grasp for it.
Pitt’s reputation does not appear to have been damaged by this fiasco, and it must be remembered that the details of his negotiations with the King were not widely known. Furthermore, while his speech of 24 March failed to produce a wave of enthusiasm for him to lead the government, it added to his reputation for integrity and independence, since he could easily have thrown in his lot with the Fox—North coalition instead. He was pressed by them to continue in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer in a new government, and Wraxall observed that ‘it rested with him to have composed one of the new triumvirate … aided by a judgement far beyond his years’, he rejected ‘the seductive proposition’.25 More generally, of Pitt’s refusal to lead a government the Duke of Grafton commented: ‘The good judgement of so young a man, who, not void of ambition, on this trying occasion, could refuse this splendid offer, adds much to the lustre of the character he had acquired, for it was a temptation sufficient to have over-set the resolution of most men.’26
Still more important for the future, the fact that so much had turned on Pitt’s actions underlined the point that he was the only alternative to the men about to take office. Of course this was no consolation to the now utterly despairing King. He sent Pitt the following letter:
Windsor
March 25th 4.35 p.m.
Mr. Pitt,
I am much hurt to find you are determined to decline at an hour when those who have any regard for the Constitution as established by law ought to stand forth against the most daring and most unprincipled faction that the annals of this Kingdom ever produced.
GR27
He now drafted his speech of abdication, ending: ‘May I to the latest hour of my Life, though now resolved for ever to quit this Island, have the Comfort of hearing that the Endeavours of My Son, though they cannot be more sincere than Mine have been for the Prosperity of Great Britain, may be crowned with better success.’28 Once again, he did not carry out this threat. Thurlow reminded him that Kings could find it very easy to leave their country but very difficult ever to come back, James II being a case in point. On 31 March Pitt gave a valedictory speech to the Commons as Chancellor of the Exchequer, declaring that he was ‘unconnected with any party whatever; that he should keep himself reserved, and act with which ever side he thought did right’.29 On 2 April, Fox, North and their colleagues arrived to take office and kiss the King’s hand. As Fox did so, Lord John Townshend noticed the King ‘turn back his ears and eyes just like the horse at Astley’s [riding school] when the tailor he had determined to throw was getting on him’.30
The closet had been stormed. Fox was now triumphant, back in office as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with an acquiescent Whig grandee, the Duke of Portland, as First Lord of the Treasury and Lord North as Secretary of State for the Home Department. Lord John Cavendish, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer before Pitt, resumed his former position. The coalition had succeeded in refusing to accept Lord Thurlow as Lord Chancellor, but as George III would not accept anyone else the position was simply left vacant.
The relations of this government with the King were not good, and never would be. Fox cheerfully observed that the King ‘will dye soon & that will be best of all’.31 George adopted a royal version of working to rule, and simply refused to grant any peerages or other honours at the request of his new Ministers, making it impossible for them to send Lord North to the Upper House as they wished. As they took office, the King wrote to Pitt’s cousin Earl Temple:
I shall most certainly refuse any honours that may be asked by them; I trust the eyes of the Nation will soon be opened as my sorrow may prove fatal to my health if I remain long in this thraldom; I trust You will be steady in Your attachment to Me and ready to join other honest Men in watching the conduct of this unnatural Combination, and I hope many months will not elapse before the Grenvilles, the Pitts and other men of abilities and character will relieve Me from a Situation that nothing but the supposition that no other means remained of preventing the public finances from being materially affected would have compelled me to submit to.32
Rarely in history has a monarch been so utterly determined to overthrow the government acting in his name. In achieving that objective, the King and his fellow conspirators, the Lords Temple and Thurlow, knew that Pitt was a vital instrument. They could well have interpreted the events of March 1783 as showing that Pitt could not be relied upon. But more importantly, the same events had shown that no alternative government to the Fox—North coalition could hold its own in the House of Commons without Pitt at its head. No one else had even come close to rescuing the King. These events had therefore strengthened Pitt’s position should any ‘accident’ befall the administration. So while some, such as George Rose, believed that ‘Mr. Pitt was extinguished nearly for life as a politician’,33 others thought the outlook for him was distinctly promising. By June bets were being laid at Brooks’s Club that Pitt or Temple would be Prime Minister by Christmas, with odds of four to one against.34
Pitt himself moved quickly out of Downing Street, and developed the habit of staying with his friends in Wimbledon. He seemed genuinely relaxed about leaving office. One of the puzzles about Pitt is whether his protestations of caring little whether or not he was in government – ‘I had no great desire to come in and shall have no great reluctance to go out’ – represented his genuine feelings or were an affectation to enhance the impression of an independent character. Honest though he had often proved himself to be, we know from his assertion on 24 March that he knew of ‘no arrangement’ for a new administration, when he was in full negotiation with the King, that he was not always truthful when trying to demonstrate his independence of action. A far more glaring example of this would become apparent when the stakes were even higher. It is also obvious that he was prepared to fight hard to retain office or to acquire it. He must have known, looking around him in the House of Commons, that he merited high office, and that he was one of the very few people actually capable of governing the country.
Three factors would seem to have combined to make Pitt at this stage in his career both ambitious for office and yet relaxed about the gaining or losing of it. The first was this very sense of meritocratic superiority. Shortly after Pitt became Prime Minister, Wraxall wrote his famous account of his personal style:
in his manners, Pitt, if not repulsive, was cold, stiff, and without suavity or amenity. He seemed never to invite approach or to encourage acquaintance, though when addressed he could be polite, communicative, and occasionally gracious … From the instant that Pitt entered the doorway of the House of Commons, he advanced up the floor with a quick and firm step, his head erect and thrown back, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor favouring with a nod or a glance any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many who p
ossessed five thousand pounds a year would have been gratified even by so slight a mark of attention. It was not thus that Lord North or Fox treated Parliament, nor from them would Parliament have so patiently endured it; but Pitt seemed made to guide and to command, even more than to persuade or to convince, the assembly that he addressed.35
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 15
