* Compared to only three MPs under the age of thirty elected in 2005.
* The equivalent of more than £1 million today. The highest expenditure by a single candidate in the 2005 election was £13,212.
Who but madmen would enter a contest for such a county, or indeed for any county?
PHILIP FRANCIS TO CHRISTOPHER WYVILL,
on the subject of an election for the county of Yorkshire, 17941
Tear the enemy to pieces.
WILLIAM PITT TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, 24 March 17842
HOWEVER QUIET the scene when a tired messenger rode his horse up to Lord George Germain’s house in Pall Mall on the morning of Sunday, 25 November 1781, the contents of the message he carried would lead to two and a half years of upheaval and crisis in the government and politics of Britain. All night long the relays of horses from the port of Falmouth in Cornwall had borne towards London the news that Lord North and his embattled ministers must have dreaded: at Yorktown in Virginia, an entire British army under General Cornwallis had capitulated. While military commanders might calculate that the war could be continued from the British stronghold of New York, others knew that this disaster would ‘occasion the loss of all the Southern colonies very speedily’,3 and that British possessions in the West Indies, including Jamaica, could be ‘in imminent danger’.4 Germain, the dogged but hapless Secretary of State, would soon produce a plan for struggling on with the war, trying to hold New York, Charleston and Savannah while mounting amphibious raids and courting American loyalists. But Lord North, possessed as usual with a sure feel for parliamentary opinion, knew that in domestic politics the game was up. ‘Oh God it is all over!’5 he exclaimed when the news of Yorktown reached Downing Street that fateful Sunday morning.
Caught between the implacable George III on the one side and the growing view among MPs that further fighting would bring ruin at the hands of France and Spain in addition to the now inevitable loss of the American colonies, the North administration staggered uncertainly on through the winter of 1781–82, sacrificing Germain that January but still failing to win the confidence of Parliament or the nation. The attacks mounted on the enfeebled administration by Fox, Burke, Pitt and other opposition Members were merciless and scathing, while at the same time a growing number of independent MPs concluded that North must be ousted and the war ended. Wilberforce was among them, delivering a speech on 22 February 1782 which was his first major display of political partisanship in the Commons. While the year before he might have ‘staid in with the old fat fellow’, Wilberforce now turned on the same portly figure of Lord North. He declared that ‘while the present Ministry existed there were no prospects of either peace or happiness to this Kingdom’. It was clear that the government intended to pursue the ruinous war in a cruel, bloody and impracticable manner; the actions of ministers more ‘resembled the career of furious madmen than the necessarily vigorous and prudent exertions of able statesmen’.6 He voted solidly with the opposition in the close-fought divisions of late February and early March 1782. On 20 March he would have witnessed the resignation of North after twelve years in office, the snow falling outside the House of Commons as British politicians turned their minds to how to construct a fresh government while rescuing a tottering Empire. Nominally still an independent Member, Wilberforce had clearly aligned himself with the opposition, and was invited to their meetings. That he should have taken such a strong stand against the North government and the American War is not surprising. He had befriended Pitt, for whom opposition to the war was second nature; he admired Fox, whom he found ‘very pleasant and unaffected’7 at a number of dinners and who had masterminded the tactics of the opposition; he was also alert to the political mood and alive to the simple reality of the time, namely that the only way in which the British could mitigate their defeat was to turf out the ministers who could be blamed for it.
While ‘no party man’, Wilberforce would find himself for the next four years very much categorised as belonging to a party. The common thread which would run through all his political dispositions until 1786 was loyalty to his great friend Pitt. Pitt was not a member of the new government formed from among the opposition groupings in March 1782, having rather haughtily declared in advance that he could ‘never accept a subordinate situation’,8 and not having been offered a senior one. Nevertheless, he and Wilberforce were firm supporters of this new Whig-led government, headed by the Marquis of Rockingham, who was as munificent in his wealth and aristocratic grandeur as he was inadequate as a political leader or manager. Fox, the new Secretary of State and ministerial leader in the Commons, seethed with indignation that the King had seen fit only to conduct negotiations with the lesser of the opposition groupings, that led by Shelburne. Wilberforce was included in the discussions held about the formation of the government, and remembered ‘Fox awkwardly bringing out that Lord Shelburne only had seen the King, in short jealousy between Foxites and Shelburneites manifested, tho’ for a long time suppressed’.9 The wily George III, in a ‘masterpiece of Royal skill’,10 had ensured that the Rockingham administration would be poisoned from the outset with a rich dose of resentment and suspicion. He did not intend that those who had opposed the American War would stay in office for long.
The Rockingham administration did indeed turn out to be one of the most ill-fated in British history. Within weeks Fox and Shelburne were at furious loggerheads over the terms of the peace treaty being negotiated in Paris, and within three months of entering office Rockingham was dead. Wilberforce had been much courted by Rockingham during his final months. The formerly unknown Member for Hull was by now identified as an active MP who could think more clearly and speak more forcefully than most of his colleagues. With Rockingham keen to secure the loyalty of an able Yorkshireman, and the Whigs looking forward to creating new peers who could strengthen their position in the House of Lords, there were even rumours that Wilberforce would soon be ennobled. Eager suppliers of ermine robes were in touch with him to try to secure his business in the event of this happy elevation taking place.
It seems unlikely that Wilberforce would have accepted a peerage at the age of twenty-two, even though peerages in the eighteenth century were far scarcer than they have since become, and at that time carried the automatic guarantee of being passed on through the generations. Like Pitt, he saw the Commons as the only place for a young man of ambition and energy. At this stage of his life Wilberforce certainly harboured some ambitions for office, but in July 1782 he could only watch loyally as yet another new government took office, this time with Shelburne as First Lord of the Treasury and the twenty-three-year-old Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There is no trace of jealousy in Wilberforce’s attitude towards the spectacular promotion of his friend. Indeed, it was in the summer of 1782 that these two young men began to form a bond of companionship sufficiently strong that it could never be completely ruptured even by the sharpest of disagreements in later years. They were both key members of the group of twenty-five Cambridge graduates who formed Goostree’s club in Pall Mall, dining, drinking and gambling there every night when Parliament was sitting. There, with Lord Euston, Pepper Arden, Henry Bankes and Edward Eliot, ‘all youngsters just entering into life’,11 they enjoyed themselves to the full, going on to the House of Commons where George Selwyn could find them ‘singing and laughing à gorge déployée’, making him ‘wish for one day to be twenty’.12 Some evenings or in the recess Pitt would ride out to Wimbledon to spend the night at Lauriston House, which Wilberforce had now inherited, and ‘for near three month slept almost every night there’.13 Despite the political responsibilities they now enjoyed, their letters