Getting to Know the Prime Ministers

George Grenville was the prime minister of Great Britain in 1765, when he pushed Parliament to pass the Stamp Act.

The Duke of Portland was prime minister in 1783 when British diplomats signed the Treaty of Paris.

Between those two men, five others served as prime minister, one in two separate stints. Lord North held the job for longer than all the others put together, so he was the most important to the American Revolution. Even so, all those men led governments that made crucial decisions on Britain’s colonial policy.

It’s tempting to view Downing Street politics of that time through the model of today’s British government, but that would be a mistake. Changes in the British cabinet during the eighteenth century had more to do with personalities, the king’s preferences, and chance than with national party politics and majorities.

I’m therefore grateful to have found the Prime Ministers podcast. In each episode, the political journalist and former Conservative office-seeker Iain Dale interviews a historian about one person who served as Britain’s prime minister since Robert Walpole first defined the office. I’ve been picking out the episodes on the eighteenth century.

The podcast and Dale’s choice of interlocutors are based on his anthology of profiles The Prime Ministers: 55 Leaders, 55 Authors, 300 Years of History. It was published in the U.K. last year and is scheduled to come out in the U.S. of A. at the end of 2021.

One insight from those discussions was how experience in the House of Commons was usually important for a prime minister’s success, yet the system still favored candidates from the hereditary aristocracy. After Grenville the prime ministers included two dukes, a marquess, and two earls.

One of those earls, Chatham, had the best years of his career as William Pitt in the House of Commons. The other, Shelburne, never got to sit in Parliament as a young man and therefore, the podcast discussion suggests, he lacked the negotiating experience needed to win members over to his policies.

Lord North’s title was a courtesy; he wasn’t yet a peer but only the son and heir of the Earl of Guilford, so he was eligible for the Commons. That seat gave North lots of experience in party politics and legislation, leading to that long tenure as prime minister. In fact, less than two years after losing office because of Yorktown, North maneuvered himself back into being one of the real powers behind the Duke of Portland.

Another valuable lesson of these profiles is that events in America rarely played a role in changes at the top of the British government. Grenville lost favor with the royal family, depression led the Chatham ministry to crumble, and the Duke of Grafton left because of developments in Corsica. Only Lord North lost the post because of what happened on the far side of the Atlantic.

For the record, the prime ministers during America’s Revolution were:

• George Grenville (1763-1765)
• Marquess of Rockingham (1765-1766, head of a coalition initially dominated by the Duke of Cumberland, the king’s uncle)
• Earl of Chatham (1766-1768)
• Duke of Grafton (1768-1770)
• Lord North (1770-1782)
• Marquess of Rockingham again (1782)
• Earl of Shelburne (1782-1783)
• Duke of Portland (1783, figurehead of a coalition dominated by Lord North and Charles James Fox)

Then came William Pitt the Younger, who held onto the office for eighteen years and then came back for more.