Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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THE CHATHAM MINISTRY AND ITS
INHERITED COLONIAL PROBLEMS
I
A , , the Duke of Grafton, one of the Secretaries of State
in the Rockingham Ministry, begged Lord Rockingham to press the
King to send for William Pitt and give him carte blanche to come into
the present Ministry or form a new one. Rockingham refused, where-
upon Grafton told the King he must resign since he had joined the Min-
istry on the understanding that “any time Mr. Pitt chose to accept,” the
members of it would “act under him or retire whichever He directed,”
implying that Pitt was now ready to accept.¹
Three days later (May ), Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty,
by direction of the King,² proposed to Rockingham and Henry S.
Conway, the other Secretary of State and Leader of the House of
Commons, “a thorough coalition” with friends of Lord Bute, including
Bute’s son-in-law, Lord Northumberland. Rockingham and Conway
replied that they would not consider going further than to give a place
to Bute’s brother, James Stuart Mackenzie,³ whom, as we saw in Chap-
ter , the King had dismissed under heavy pressure from a majority of
the Cabinet in the Grenville Ministry.
The Lord Chancellor, Lord Northington, who assured the King that
“he was alone attach’d to me and would support whatever men I
chose to entrust in Government,”⁴ presumably was prepared to adopt
the King’s proposal in full. But the other two members of the Cabinet,
Rockingham’s father-in-law, Lord Winchilsea, President of the Coun-
cil, and the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Privy Seal, backed up Rocking-
ham and Conway, declaring with them that “if they were to go farther
now than taking in Mr. Mackenzie, their own Friends would all Leave
them.”⁵
The King thereupon (May ) asked Bute whether “if I call on those
who call themselves attached to you, I cannot form something out
of that chosen band that will stand by me. I find,” he continued, that
“Lord North [a former member of the Treasury Board and an able
speaker] is ready to quit opposition; in short I am willing to take any but
the men that us’d me so infamously last year...,Mr. Greenville and
the late Secretarys,”⁶ i.e., Secretaries of State Lord Halifax and Lord
Sandwich.
On Bute’s replying that there were no “hopes of any formation with-
out either Mr. Pitt or Mr. Greenville at the head of it,”⁷ the King ap-
parently laid aside or put on ice the thought of a change. Grafton, who
resigned on May , was replaced by the Duke of Richmond,⁸ and the
Ministry not only carried on successfully during the brief remainder of
the current session of Parliament, which closed June ,⁹ but seemed in
a fair way to continue at least until Parliament met again in the fall.¹⁰
This, however, was not to be. Grafton, without consulting Conway
(who, as Leader of the House of Commons would have to bear the
brunt of carrying the measure through that House) had promised the
King to bring in a bill at the current session of Parliament to settle
£, a year more on each of the King’s three brothers, and the King
had so informed them.¹¹ Upon learning of this plan, Conway “objected
to so considerable a donation being hurried through the remnant of a
thin house,”¹² and Rockingham gave way; he told the King that the pro-
posed bill must be deferred until the next session of Parliament.¹³ Rock-
ingham managed to soothe the King’s brothers by agreeing to present
to Parliament before it rose a resolution for a grant to them at the next
session.¹⁴ But the King was determined to use Rockingham’s breach of
promise as an excuse to rid himself of the Rockingham administration
as soon as Parliament rose.
“On the strange scene concerning the money for my brothers,” he
wrote Bute, “I thought the moment was come that I should be able with
honour to get rid of my administration; nay I had already sent for the
Chancellor [Northington] that he might have sounded Lord Cambden
[Pitt’s most important follower] with regard to Mr. Pitt when my broth-
ers made the proposal that compromised the affair; this disappointed
me but did not remove my resolution of encouraging the Chancellor
to continue to get lights from the Chief Justice [Camden] whilst I rely’d
on Providence to point out the minute when I could best dismiss my
Ministry.”¹⁵
The King had reason to turn to Pitt, since he knew that Pitt had re-
cently gone on record in the House of Commons that “he thought it
shameful to proscribe his [Bute’s] relations and his friends,”¹⁶ and also
had said that (expressing a sentiment dear to the King’s heart)¹⁷ “if ever
he was again admitted...into the Royal presence, it should be inde-
pendent of any personal [i.e., party] connections whatsoever.”¹⁸
There remained the necessity of Providence affording a better ex-
cuse for throwing out the Rockingham Ministry than its refusal to ally
itself with the friends of so unpopular a character as Bute¹⁹ or than the
King’s vexation over the affair of the proposed settlement on his broth-
ers. This came shortly (July ), when Northington, long dissatisfied with
his fellow Cabinet ministers²⁰ and apparently hoping to curry favor with
the King,²¹ asked his permission to cease attending Cabinet meetings
and if his colleagues asked the reason for thus absenting himself “to de-
clare the little confidence shewed him was the cause of it added to his
opinion that he could not with honour continue in the station unless a
stronger Administration was formed.”²²
Seizing this opening “to bring things to an issue very honourably to
myself” the King had Northington sound out Camden as to “what would
be the best channel of getting at Mr. Pitt,” who replied that Northing-
ton himself was the person.²³ Whereupon the King wrote Pitt July .
“Your very dutiful and handsome conduct the last summer makes
me desirous of having your thoughts to how an able and dignified min-
istry may be formed. I desire, therefore, you will come, for this salutory
purpose, to town.
“I cannot conclude without expressing how entirely my ideas con-
cerning the basis on which a new administration should be erected, are
consonant to the opinion you gave on that subject in parliament a few
days before you set out for Somersetshire.
“I convey this through the channel of the Earl of Northington, as
there is no man in my service on whom I so perfectly rely, and who, I
know, agrees with me perfectly in the contents of this letter.”
“George R”²⁴
Pitt replied,
“Sire,
“Penetrated with the deepest sense of your Majesty’s boundless
goodness to me, and with a heart overflowing with duty and zeal for the
honour and the happiness of the most gracious and benign Sovereign,
I shall hasten to London as fast as I possibly can; wishing that I could
change infirmity²⁵ into wings of expedition, the sooner to be permitted
the high honour to lay at your Majesty’s feet, the poor but sincere offer-
ing of the little services of
“Your Majesty’s
most dutiful subject
and devoted servant,
William Pitt.”²⁶
Pitt’s brother-in-law, Lord Temple, offered the place of First Lord of
the Treasury as he had been the year before (Chapter ), again refused
to accept, saying he declined to be “a capital cypher, surrounded by
cyphers of quite a different complexion, the whole under the guidance
of that great Commoner with the Privy Seal in his hand.”²⁷ But this
time Pitt proceeded to form a Ministry without Temple, and by the end
of the month was ready to take over, as appears from the following let-
ter of July , from the King to him:
“I am...glad we are now come to a final end of all quid pro quos.
I have signed this day the Warrant for creating you an Earl²⁸ & shall
with pleasure receive You in that Capacity tomorrow as well as entrust
You with my Privy Seal, as I know the Earl of Chatham will zealously
give his aid to destroying all party distinctions and restoring that subor-
dination to Government which alone can preserve that inestimable
Blessing Liberty from degenerating into Licentiousness.”²⁹
The King had informed Rockingham, Newcastle, Conway, and
Richmond on July that he had “sent for Mr. Pitt” and on July that
Pitt was taking over soon, which he did on July .³⁰*
* P. Langford, The First Rockingham Administration, ch. . [B.W.S.]
Thus, without a vote of no confidence in Parliament on any impor-
tant issue or even the loss of a single by-election, two successive Min-
istries were dismissed within but little more than a year, at the will, not
to say whim, of the King.
Pitt, now Lord Chatham,³¹ elected, as indicated by the King’s letter
last quoted, to take the office of Lord Privy Seal previously held by New-
castle, and three of the most important Cabinet offices were given to
Pitt’s followers: Rockingham was replaced by Grafton as First Lord of
the Treasury, Northington by Lord Camden as Lord Chancellor, and
Richmond by Lord Shelburne as a Secretary of State.³² Three mem-
bers of the Rockingham Ministry were retained
—Conway as a Secre-
tary of State and Leader of the House of Commons,³³ Egmont as First
Lord of the Admiralty, (but only until September, , when he re-
signed and was replaced by Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, who in De-
cember, , was succeeded by Admiral Sir Edward Hawke),³⁴ and
Northington, who replaced Winchilsea as President of the Council.
The Cabinet was enlarged by adding one of Pitt’s friends, Lord
Granby, Master General of the Ordnance, who had held that place in
the Rockingham Ministry but without a seat in the Cabinet,³⁵ and
Charles Townshend,³⁶ the new Chancellor of the Exchequer.³⁷
Good will was shown toward Bute by restoring his brother, James
Stuart Mackenzie, to his former office of Lord Privy Seal for Scotland.³⁸
From the standpoint of relations with the colonies, the change in
Ministry was dangerous.
Chatham’s heading the new Ministry might, at first glance, seem to
ensure that during his administration, taxation of the colonies would
not be revived, since he had favored repeal of the Stamp Act not only
as a matter of policy but, as stated in his great speech of the preceding
January, on the ground that “this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon
the colonies.”³⁹
But what if the colonists failed to behave with “the prudence and
temper”⁴⁰ he had, in that same speech, declared they would if the
Stamp Act were repealed? What if they now opposed other British acts
disrelished by them? Wounded in pride by the colonists’ repudiation
of his assurance as to how they would behave,⁴¹ and notorious for his
abrupt shifts of stand,⁴² might not Chatham now take a very different
position as to colonial taxation? His earlier position that Parliament
had no right to pass the proposed Stamp Act would be no bar, since
apparently it was now accepted British doctrine that the constitution
could be changed by mere act of Parliament.⁴³
Furthermore, the dismissal of Newcastle from, and inclusion of,
Granby and Townshend in the Cabinet were ill omens for the colonies.
Newcastle, the only leading British statesman of the period with
long experience in colonial administration,⁴⁴* had strongly supported
repeal of the Stamp Act and was the only member of the Rockingham
Cabinet known to have questioned the proposed Declaratory Act as-
serting Parliament’s unlimited legislative authority over the colonies.⁴⁵
Granby, on the other hand, had taken a conspicuously anti-colonial
stand by speaking and voting against repeal of the Stamp Act;⁴⁶ and
Townshend, though generally regarded as extremely erratic,⁴⁷ “a meer
Weather Cock,” as one of his critics called him,⁴⁸ had long adhered to
at least one political policy
—the policy of Parliament’s levying taxes for
revenue on the colonies.†
As early as , Townshend had disapproved a plan to finance co-
lonial defense out of a fund to be raised voluntarily by the colonies be-
cause it “begins a great work in a wrong manner,” i.e., by having the
fund raised by the colonial Assemblies or deputies representing them,
instead of by act of Parliament.⁴⁹ In , he proposed that Parliament
raise funds toward the support of the British army in America by chang-
ing the British duty on colonial imports of foreign molasses from a pro-
tective tariff to a duty primarily for revenue,⁵⁰ and in , when the res-
olution for a colonial Stamp Act was before Parliament, he spoke strongly
in favor of it.⁵¹ Furthermore, though Townshend later supported repeal
of the stamp tax, he took pains to point out that he did so only on the
ground of immediate expediency.⁵²
One of the first problems confronting the new Ministry was the op-
position in New York, where more British troops were stationed than in
any other of the old thirteen colonies,⁵³ to an act, the Quartering Act of
, requiring every colony in which troops were housed in barracks to
* Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven: Yale University Press, ). [B.W.S.]
† Cornelius P. Forster, The Uncontrolled Chancellor: Charles Townshend and His American Policy (Provi-
dence, R.I.: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation, ). [B.W.S.]
furnish the men with fire, candles, vinegar, salt, bedding, cooking uten-
sils, and a daily ration of five pints of beer or cider or half a pint of rum.⁵⁴
In December, , the New York Assembly gave an evasive reply to
a demand to provide the supplies required by the act.⁵⁵ At this time New
Yorkers were inflamed against Great Britain, not only by the Stamp
Act, but by the threat to the finality of verdicts of juries involved in
the pending case of Forsey v. Cunningham.⁵⁶ Both these irritants had been
eliminated by the following June, when compliance with the Quarter-
ing Act again was demanded.⁵⁷ But even so, the Assembly in effect chal-
lenged the act by voting only part of the supplies required by it.⁵⁸
Apparently hopeful that the Assembly could be won over by a con-
ciliatory response, Secretary of State Shelburne wrote Sir Henry Moore,
Governor of New York, that “it cannot be doubted that His Majesty’s
Province of New York, after the Lenity of Great Britain so recently ex-
tended to America, will not fail to carry into execution the Act of Par-
liament past last Session for quartering His Majestys Troops in the full
extent and meaning of the Act....I must only Sir in general add that
I hope and believe that a very little time...will allay whatever remains
of those Heats which have so unhappily for America prevailed....”⁵⁹
But at its next (December, ) session, the Assembly not only re-
fused to vote any of the supplies required by the act, but clearly indi-
cated it had no intention ever of obeying it by sending a message to
Governor Moore declaring that “we find it impossible to comply with
what is now demanded, consistent with our obligations to our consti-
tuents;...the objections against making the provisions required are of
a nature the most serious and weighty imaginable.”⁶⁰
Moore, of course, informed Shelburne of this,⁶¹ and he passed along
the information to Chatham in a letter of February , ,⁶² which also
referred to and probably enclosed a petition from a large group of
New York merchants to the House of Commons complaining of the ad-
ditional restrictions on colonial trade imposed by the Acts of and
(described in Chapter ).⁶³
Chatham, laid up at Bath with the gout, replied in a blistering letter
(February ),⁶⁴ stating, “A spirit of infatuation has taken possession of
New York; their disobedience to the mutiny [Quartering] Act will justly
create a great ferment here, open a fair field to the arraigners of America,
and leave no room to any to say a word in their defence....The peti-
tion of the merchants of New York is highly improper; in point of time,
most absurd;⁶⁵ in the extent of their pretensions, most excessive; and in
the reasoning, most grossly fallacious and offensive. What demon of
discord blows the coals in that devoted [i.e., doomed] province I know
not, but they are doing the work of their worst enemies themselves. The
torrent of indignation will be irresistable, and they will draw upon their
heads national resentment by their ingratitude, and ruin, I fear, upon
the whole state, by the consequences.”
It was Chatham, as we saw in Chapter , who, only a year earlier,
pointing out that the colonists were without representation in Parlia-
ment, had declared, “I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions
of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to
be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.”
The colonists were still unrepresented in Parliament. Why then should
the New York Assembly not refuse to obey the Quartering Act, obvi-
ously imposing taxes on the colony,⁶⁶ and he of all men not be sympa-
thetic to their disobedience?
Nor was Chatham’s denunciation of the merchants’ petition much
more defensible. One of the grievances complained of, the ban on di-
rect shipment of non-enumerated colonial products to Ireland,⁶⁷ was,
indeed, about to be repealed⁶⁸ and another alleged grievance was ap-
parently based on a misreading of the Free Ports Act of .⁶⁹ But the
rest of the petition deserved careful and temperate consideration.
Shelburne, Northington, and some other members of the Ministry
thought it best to take no notice of the New York merchants’ petition
unless Grenville, scourge of the colonies, moved that it be laid before
the House of Commons.⁷⁰ But Chatham sensibly rejected this plan on
the ground that any attempt by the government to smother the petition
would be vulnerable to attack by the opposition,⁷¹ and his view pre-
vailed. On February , , the petition was presented to the House,
but apparently received no support.⁷²
On this same day, Shelburne wrote Chatham, who still was laid up
with the gout, that “the government appears called upon for some mea-
sure of vigour, to support the authority of Parliament and the coercive
power of this country,” and that, though the Cabinet had come to no
decision as to what plan to propose, he himself favored dealing with
New York by replacing Governor Moore with “some one of a Military
Character who might...be entrusted...to act with Force or Gentle-
ness, as circumstances might make necessary, and with the colonies in
general by “giving the Governor Power in case the Assemblys refuse to
provide [for] the Troops...to billet on Private Houses....”⁷³
On March , Grafton reported to Chatham that the Cabinet had
tentatively decided to deal with the matter by act of Parliament,⁷⁴ but
no decision as to details was reached until April , when, as we learn
from a letter of April from Shelburne to Chatham, the Cabinet
adopted a plan, subject to Chatham’s consideration, embodying a ba-
sic idea of Townshend’s⁷⁵ for an act of Parliament to suspend the au-
thority of the New York Legislature to pass any other law until it had
passed one complying with the Quartering Act.⁷⁶
No reply to Shelburne’s letter has been found, but there is nothing
to indicate that Chatham disapproved of the general idea of enforcing
obedience to the Quartering Act⁷⁷ or of the particular plan for this de-
scribed in Shelburne’s letter of April .
Resolutions for a bill to carry out the Cabinet’s plan were outlined
to the House of Commons sitting in Committee of the Whole on
May , and formally submitted to the House two days later.⁷⁸
In debating the resolutions, friends of the colonies, including Con-
way,⁷⁹ Rose Fuller and William Beckford, West Indians by birth, Charles
Garth, London Agent for South Carolina, Thomas Pownall, former
Governor of Massachusetts, and William Dowdeswell, Edmund Burke,
and several other members of the Rockingham party, opposed the res-
olutions on various grounds; but they were carried on May , to
.⁸⁰ Grenville, who had denounced the resolutions as “too feeble,”
failed to have the proposed bill made more stringent, but he secured the
adoption of a motion for an address to the King “to bestow some marks
of his favor upon the Governors and officers who had suffered by their
obedience to the acts of this legislature....”⁸¹
A bill embodying the resolutions was introduced in the House of
Commons on May , passed that House without further opposition
on June , was slightly amended by the House of Lords, and on July ,
was assented to by the King.⁸² The act thus adopted, the New York
Restraining Act, provided that all acts passed by the New York Legis-
lature after October , , were “to be null and void” until provision
was made by the New York Assembly to furnish the King’s troops in the
colony all the items required by the Quartering Act.⁸³
The Ministry also showed its determination to support and perpet-
uate the Quartering Act by securing passage of an act extending the ex-
isting law until March , ,⁸⁴ and similar acts, amended somewhat
in ,⁸⁵ were passed from year to year until after the outbreak of the
Revolutionary War.⁸⁶
Massachusetts luckily escaped involvement at the time in the con-
troversy with the British government over the Quartering Act and
British restrictions of colonial trade.
The Massachusetts House, in January, , questioned the action
of the Governor Francis Bernard and Council in having provided, out
of provincial funds, supplies for a company of British artillery tem-
porarily stationed in barracks near Boston.⁸⁷ But on Bernard’s pointing
out that “the provision...consisted of fuel and candles only, which...
always have been allowed in these barracks, and did not include several
articles prescribed by the act of Parliament,”⁸⁸ the objection apparently
was dropped. Furthermore, a petition to the House of Commons from
a group of Boston merchants, similar to the one from New York mer-
chants which so provoked Chatham,⁸⁹ with the addition of a complaint
of interference with New England fishermen by British naval vessels,⁹⁰
was not presented. The London Agent of the Massachusetts Assembly
to whom the petition was sent for presentation to the House of Com-
mons did not receive it until after the New York merchants’ petition
had in effect been rejected by the House and, therefore, he prudently
abstained from presenting it.⁹¹
Even so, opposition members in the House of Lords tried to have
Massachusetts punished or at least censured⁹² for having included in an
act to indemnify sufferers in the Stamp Tax riots a provision pardoning
offenses committed in the colony during the riots,⁹³ thus usurping, it
was said, the pardoning power of the Crown. But this move, opposed
by the Ministry, failed.⁹⁴
Evidently alarmed, as they had reason to be, over the punishment in
store for New York because of defiance of the Quartering Act, members