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 Walpole 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