William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner. William Hague

in the afternoon, ‘Eliot, Arden and I will be with you before curfew and expect an early meal of peas and strawberries.’¹⁴ Wilberforce’s diary entries in the summers of 1782 and 1783 include: ‘Delicious day – lounged morning at Wimbledon with friends, foyning^* at night, and run about the garden for an hour or two,’ or ‘To Wimbledon with Pitt and Eliot, at their persuasion,’ or ‘Fine hot day, went on water with Pitt and Eliot fishing, came back, dined, walked evening. Eliot went home, Pitt stayed.’¹⁵ There was evidently much boisterous activity, with reports of neighbours being ‘alarmed with noises at their door’¹⁶ and of Pitt having cut up the silk hat of another visitor, a future Foreign Secretary, one night and strewn the remnants around the flowerbeds. Not only did Wilberforce admire Pitt’s political abilities, he also loved his company, thinking him ‘the most truly witty man he had ever met’,¹⁷ and later recording, ‘Mr Pitt was systematically witty … the others were often run away with by their wit. Mr Pitt was always master of his. He could turn it to any end or object he desired.’¹⁸ Pitt, in turn, cherished Wilberforce’s good humour and political support.

      At Easter 1782, the two Williams had holidayed together in Bath and Brighthelmstone (modern-day Brighton). But with Pitt in office as Chancellor, Wilberforce was unable to take his friend with him later that year on the extended summer tour that would become his perennial habit over the next few years. Abandoning plans for a trip to the Continent because of a sudden by-election in Hull (Lord Robert Manners had died and was in due course succeeded, unopposed, by the previously defeated David Hartley), Wilberforce made once again for Rayrigg on Windermere before visiting Weymouth in the autumn. He simply could not do without country air, explaining to his sister in the summer of 1783 that the House of Commons was unable ‘to compensate to me for the loss of air, pleasant walks, and what Milton calls “each rural sight, each rural sound”’.¹⁹ ‘I never leave this poor villa,’ he wrote from Wimbledon, ‘without feeling my virtuous affections confirmed and strengthened; and I’m afraid it would be to some degree true if I were to add that I never remain long in London without their being somewhat injured and diminished.’²⁰ To Rayrigg he would take an assortment of books, including ‘classics, statutes at large and history’,²¹ and welcome a succession of friends.

      In the Lakes he found solitude through riding, walking and boating, but also lifelong friendship, in particular with Colonel John Pennington, more than a quarter of a century older than Wilberforce and another admirer of Pitt, who as Lord Muncaster would become the recipient of a vast proportion of Wilberforce’s letters on public affairs. Other visitors included Pitt’s future political hostess the Duchess of Gordon, and a procession of Hull family friends, one of whom found Wilberforce to be ‘riotous and noisy’.²² Once ensconced at Weymouth in the middle of October, he was writing to Edward Eliot to say that ‘So mild is the climate and so calm and clear is the sea that on this very fifteenth day of October I am sitting with my window open on its side and am every moment wishing myself up to the chin in it.’²³ It was an abiding characteristic that he would seek out the long summer periods of rest and contemplation which his wealth permitted and his inclination and constitution required. Where Pitt was happy to spend many of his summers dealing with the grind of dispatches and correspondence and darting a short distance out of London for a brief respite, Wilberforce drew strength and inspiration from a more balanced existence. It was a difference of temperament which helped to make one of them suitable for high office, and the other designed for high ideals.

      Pitt’s aptitude for high office was soon tested. His boss, the Earl of Shelburne, proved unable or unwilling to broaden the political base of his ministry during the long summer recess, leaving Pitt as a principal spokesman in the House of Commons for a government which had only minority support. By the time the preliminaries of the peace agreement with France, Spain and the new United States of America were ready to be put to Parliament for approval in February 1783, the Shelburne ministry was vulnerable to parliamentary ambush. The proposed peace treaties represented a reasonable settlement under all the circumstances, with Britain’s negotiating position having been strengthened by a crucial naval victory in the West Indies in April 1782. Britain would give up the Floridas and Minorca to Spain, St Lucia and some other islands to France, and the huge tracts of territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi were awarded to America at the same time as her independence was recognised. Shelburne had simultaneously taken great care to negotiate an extensive commercial treaty with America. While these proposals were wholly realistic, and even far-sighted, Fox took the opportunity to attack them as a means of removing his hated rival from power. In one of the great unholy alliances of British political history, the supporters of Fox, who had always opposed the war, and the party of North, which had prosecuted it, now came together to drive Shelburne from office, and Pitt with him.

      Pitt asked Wilberforce to give one of the leading speeches in a crucial debate on the peace treaty on 17 February 1783. Clearly he believed that the voice of Wilberforce was already influential and eloquent; for his part Wilberforce was ready to do anything for his friend. Wilberforce was tense as he prepared for his most important speech to that date. He spent a weekend with ‘his sleep disturbed at the thoughts of a full House of Commons’,²⁴ walked for several hours on the Sunday afternoon, and made a plea for the necessity of peace in his speech on the Monday afternoon, arguing that if the Fox-North coalition defeated the ministry on this issue, ‘no Minister would in future dare to make such a peace as the necessity of the country might require’.²⁵ Wilberforce’s speech was well regarded, although he recorded the events of that day in his diary in a very matter-of-fact way:

      17th. Walked down morning to House to get Milner into gallery. Seconded the address. Lost the motion by 16. Did not leave House till about eight in the morning, and bed about nine.²⁶

      It must have been a deflating experience. Pitt’s own speech was regarded indifferently, and the government defeat by sixteen votes meant that the Shelburne ministry was virtually finished. In the climactic debate of four days later, Pitt pulled himself together to deliver a stirring defence of his colleague’s policy and his own conduct which established him as a major political force. Wilberforce again spoke up for his friend, and wrote down what has become a celebrated note of Pitt’s physical sickness at the time: ‘Pitt’s famous speech on second day’s debate – first day’s not so good. Spoke three hours, till four in the morning. Stomach disordered, and actually holding Solomon’s porch door opened with one hand, while vomiting during Fox’s speech to whom he was to reply.’²⁷

      The combination of Pitt’s oratorical performances, the shortage of weighty figures in the Commons and the desperation of George III to find a parliamentary figure who could prevent the Fox-North coalition from coming to power catapulted William Pitt into the front rank of political life as a potential Prime Minister. Shelburne resigned on 24 February, but for the whole of March Pitt remained in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer in a government without a leader while the King thrashed about in an increasingly desperate search for a Prime Minister he did not hate. Twice during the five-week crisis Pitt came close to accepting office as Prime Minister while still only twenty-three years old, but twice he had the good sense to recognise that he would have had no defence against a hostile House of Commons moving quickly to vote him out. The irascible King varied for five weeks between trying to insist that Pitt take office, begging other ex-ministers to do so, sending for Pitt’s uncle, Thomas Pitt, as a desperate resort -’Mr Thomas Pitt or Mr Thomas anybody’,²⁸ threatening to abdicate and finally, in late March, accepting the Fox-North coalition into power with the Duke of Portland as its nominal head. He did this with the worst possible grace, accompanied by a fixed resolution to create no peerages or honours at their request and a secret determination to eject them from office whenever a convenient pretext arose: ‘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.’²⁹

      Throughout the chaos Wilberforce remained closely connected to Pitt, both socially and politically. If he felt any jealousy about the spectacular rise to prominence of his friend he was good at hiding it, although on the day Pitt was first offered the premiership he noted: ‘24th. Dined Pitt’s – heard of the very surprising propositions.’³⁰ When Pitt resigned at the end of March, he gravitated immediately