REVIEW OF BOOKS
Robert Blake on the problems of the Whig succession
Charles Watson Wentworth, second and last Marquis of Rockingham, was twice Prime. Minister — for just over a year in 1765-6, and for three months till July 1, 1782 when his administration was ended by his premature death at the age of fifty-two. He was one of the richest landowners in England. When he succeeded his father in 1750 he had a rent roll of £20,000. His marriage to a Yorkshire heiress added £5,000 and a cash sum of £50,000. By the time he died his estates were worth over £50,000 a year. In 1827 his nephew and heir Earl Fitzwilliam (whose own property was quite modest before he inherited his uncle's fortune — some £7,000 a year heavily encumbered) enjoyed an income reckoned at £115,000; and this was in spite of having blued nearly £100,000 in the famous Yorkshire election to get his son, Lord Milton, into Parliament against a younger son of the Earl of Harewood who himself spent over £90,000 in what must have been the most costly contest in the history of England. Even Wilberforce who topped the poll had to spend £30,000, but — the reward of virtue — it was all .raised by public subscription. Rockingham's second administration is generally agreed to have been something of a landmark in the history of parties. It was the first occasion on which a change in the office of .First Lord of the Treasury was accompanied by a change in nearly all the major Cabinet posts. Of Lord North's ministers only the Lord Chancellor survived, and by eighteenth century convention he had often been regarded as a special case. Moreover, a sharp division of outlook and policy existed between the two administrations. Despite one or two blurred lines, one can trace the Whig Party of Grey, Melbourne, and Russell from the Rockingham Whigs of 1782. The problem is the link between the latter and Rockingham's first administration. What continuity, if any, is there between those who supported Rockingham in 1765-6 and the party on which he could rely seventeen years later? Here we come to one of the great historiographical disputes of the last half century. Sir Lewis Namier maintained that the continuity was negligible. This was a part of his general attack on "the Whig interpretation of history." Macaulay and disciples such as Lecky regarded George III as an 'unconstitutional' monarch whose efforts to establish personal rule were frustrated by a Whig Party which had had a continuous existence since the Exclusion crisis of 1679-81, and which was to last to the end of Macaulay's own lifetime. Namier argued that George III far from being unconstitutional was acting within the established conventions of the day. He analysed parties into `connections' based on kinship and patronage, insisted on the hitherto unrecognised importance of local affairs, and, in Dr O'Gorman's words, "reduced the body politic to a loose federation of country houses." Namier's "assumption that material motives outweighed the importance of ideas drained politics of principle, of conscious human purpose and thus of any continuity." `Namierism', though brilliantly presented and evidently at least in part a wholesome corrective to Whig history, never entirely gained the day. Sir Keith Feiling in his much underestimated, The Second Tory Party 1714-1832 (1938) showed that a thread of continuity could be discerned in the history of one of the great political parties and Sir Herbert Butterfield in George III and the Historians (1957), was critical about many of Namier's arguments. During the last decade Namierism has come increasingly under fire. Professor J. H. Plumb in his Ford lectures published eight years ago, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725, devastatingly refuted an attempt to extend the Namierite frontier to the period of William III and Anne; and now the attack has penetrated to the very citadel.
Dr O'Gorman has written a valuable and important book.* While fully appreciating Sir Lewis Namier's achievement he has to a proper degree rehabilitated the Whig interpretation. There was a real continuity from the Whigs led by Henry Pelham through to Rockingham's first and second administration, and thence to Charles Fox and on to Grey. The case is well made and based on a great deal of research into a multitude of hitherto unexamined papers. Dr O'Gorman is lively, shrewd and perceptive although he writes rather clumsily, at times almost ungrammatically. The book would have gained if it had been rather shorter, and if the proofs had been read more carefully. There is, however, an agreeable zest and enthusiasm about it and one feels at the end that the author really does understand what it was like to be a `leader of the Opposition', if that phrase can be used at all of the reign of George III.
Rockingham himself does not emerge as a particularly interesting figure. He was honourable, virtuous, high-minded. His views on policy were in general sensible, but his elevation to the Treasury in 1765 was, as Dr O'Gorman says, due to his "position rather than his talents." He was only thirty-five and had little experience. He owed his appointment to the King's hatred of George Grenville, the refusal of Pitt and Temple to take office, and the reluctance of the
*The Rise of Party in England, the Rockingham Whigs 1760-82 Frank O'Gorman (Allen and Unwin £11.95)
ageing Duke of Newcastle to resume the burden of the Treasury. The real 'Prime Minister' was the King's uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who had no office but turned up frequently at Cabinet meetings and presided when he did. After his death, Rockingham made a series of tactical errors. He was surprisingly naive politically, and experience made little difference. Out-manoeuvred by Chatham, by Grafton, above all by North, he would have been in opposition for ever but for the disaster of Yorktown. The Rockingham Whigs succeeded only because British arms failed.
Even that golden opportunity was botched. Rockingham seemed to forget that he only led a section of the anti-North opposition. One of his worst errors was to affront Shelburne who was a no less significant opponent of North than Rockingham himself. To slight that slippery customer was the height of folly. Shelburne, in conjunction with the king, contrived to put the new First Lord into a false position from the outset. Even if Rockingham had lived, it is unlikely that his administration would have lasted very long.
Nevertheless, he has a solid achievement to his credit. The notion of party was born, or perhaps one should say revived because of the mistrust created by George In and his reliance on Bute in the early years of his reign. Rockingham and Burke saw that it would only be possible to curb monarchical power by putting a new concept of government in its place. In the short term they failed. The crisis of 1782-4 was resolved in favour of court government when the younger Pitt ousted the Fox-North coalition. However, as Dr O'Gorman puts it, "in the longer term the Rockingham Whig party is the crucial link between the politics of mid-Hanoverian England and the great Whig and Tory parties of the nineteenth century."
The last part of this link is the theme of Mr E. A. Smith in his excellent and admirably written biography** of the second Earl Fitzwilliam, The Earl was a pure Rockinghamite, deeply suspicious of the court, of power, authority and the enforcers of law and order. He inherited his uncle's gigantic mansion, vast estates, Yorkshire-based electoral influence and Whig principles, but not — unfortunately for the party — his position as leader which went to the Duke of Portland. Fitzwilliam, who made a hopeless hash of his only executive post, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1794-5, was altogether too rigid and doctrinaire to be the head of a political party. Nor of course, did he inherit his uncle's marquisate. The Duke of Portland suggested that it might be revived in his favour in 1783, only to be met with "a silent but empty bow" from the King.
Twenty-three years later the oiler was made, but it was too late. Rockingham's had been the only marquisate in the peerage when he died, but in 1806, Fitzwilliam writing to Lord Howick pointed out that he could not be said to be reviving his uncle's honours if he came in "at the tail of a Marquess of Sligo etc etc. . . All my feelings forbid it." Here we have the complete Whig, enormously rich, very touchy about his honours, yet ready to court being dismissed, as he duly was, from his much prized Lord Lieutenancy of Yorkshire (like Rockingham he was the county's uncrowned king), for criticising the government over Peterloo. One may not greatly like, but one must respect these guardians of a creed outworn who unconsciously facilitated the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Mr Smith has written an authoritative and interesting book on this somewhat tiresome, often prickly, but nonetheless much beloved figure.
Lord Blake is the Provost of Queen's College, Oxford.
**Whig Principles and Party Politics, Earl Fitzwifliarn and the Whig Party, 1748-1833 E. A. Smith (Manchester University Press £9.00)
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