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