Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

11.5 - Frederick North, Lord North (Part 3) - "The Man Who Lost America"

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11.5 - Frederick North, Lord North (Part 3) - "The Man Who Lost America"

Episode Transcript

Joe: Our audience, I think, is getting impatient. We haven't had a Maine episode in a long time.

Abram: Do you mean a New Hampshire episode? What even is Maine?

Joe: I mean, Maine is the part of Massachusetts that no one likes.

Abram: Really?

Joe: That's certainly the case in the 1770s. All right. All of our microphones are on, Abram. Finally, Frederick North, Part 3. Abram, theme song.

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Frederick North, Part 3.

Parliament: Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I'm here with my dad reviewing all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Andy Burnham. I have to get used to saying that now. Boy, they just go through those Prime Ministers so fast, don't they? I've seen this video of like a Horrible Histories parody of the Prime Ministers since the mid-2010s. And it's funny and somewhat accurate at the same time.

Joe: Yeah, that's—

Abram: Resign, resign, resign, resign, defeated, resigned. This is episode 11.5, Frederick North, Part 3.

Joe: Abram, this is the last one, just as I promised.

Abram: I don't believe you.

Joe: Yeah, well—

Abram: You're going to sneak in one for the last day of his life and it'll be like 1 minute long and we'll rate him.

Joe: No, that is not true.

Abram: Really?

Joe: So we've been away. We've been in Spain for our family vacation.

Abram: Because, you know, we're a family. We do that.

Joe: And we were thinking about doing a Spanish Prime Minister or a Spain episode, but Abram said let's just concentrate on doing British Prime Ministers for now. So there is no Spain special, but there will be a new Frederick North and there will be a new Prime Factors Musical Help. And we're excited to get those out very soon.

Abram: So. You can cry all you want about no Spain special, but just know that it's the truth.

Joe: Yeah. Wow. I don't think any of them are crying. I think I'm crying.

Abram: Can I please put in some sad music. Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at primefactorspodcast.com. Also on Facebook and Bluesky. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review.

Joe: So as we close in on the end of Lord North's career, we're going to be following two separate paths: the Revolution, which dominated pretty much the remainder of his time in office, and Lord North's increasingly frail health.

Abram: He's only like 40 in the story, right?

Joe: Yeah, well—

Abram: He's younger than you!

Joe: He has some problems, and so do I.

Abram: No, you don't. You're completely flawless. Oh, and by the way, my dad's 47.

Joe: But the war has not started yet.

Abram: Wait, what war?

Joe: The American Revolution! Huh? That's what this episode is about.

Abram: No wonder there's this funny paper in front of me.

Joe: Well— We'll talk about the funny paper in a little bit, but the war has not started yet, and we're gonna begin this episode with an unexpected American cameo. Abram, would you do the honors?

Picture This

Joe: The date is January 29th, 1774, and we set our scene in Whitehall, the government neighborhood of London, not far from 10 Downing Street. This is where the real work of government gets done in offices and converted buildings occupied by many departments of the British government.

Joe: We follow an older man, heavyset and wearing a pair of spectacles, as he makes his way down one of these government corridors towards a large meeting room. He's dressed in a handsome Manchester velvet suit. This is not his first meeting here. This man has spent most of the last 17 years representing American interests in London, and he knows these halls well.

Joe: The man pauses before entering, listening to the sound of arguments already audible on the other side of the door. He stands tall, adjusts his spectacles, and steps through. Abram, you might recognize this man. He has the look of someone who might tie a key to a kite and fly it in a thunderstorm. Who is it, Abram?

Abram: Stephen Cayley.

Joe: No. Who is it really?

Abram: Benjamin Franklin in London. What's he doing there?

Joe: Well, I told you, he works—

Abram: I thought he likes the colonies.

Joe: But he works in London.

Abram: How does he go across an ocean? Just to commute.

Joe: He pretty much lives in London. He actually has, like, a Postmaster General job in London.

Abram: Then why is he associated with the colonies?

Joe: Because he's an American. He's from Philadelphia. He lived in Boston. He's the colonial representative in London. He spends a lot of time in Europe. He spends a lot of time in France, like flirting with French women.

Abram: Oh!

Joe: This isn't a biography of Franklin. If you want to do that sometime, we'd need another special.

Abram: No specials whatsoever.

Joe: All right. But the point is that, yes, this is indeed Benjamin Franklin. And Abram, we have a picture. So take a look at that picture right there.

Abram: Looks like a bunch of guys with wigs.

Joe: Yeah, that's true.

Abram: Are they wigs? Uh, or are they Tories?

Joe: Uh, most of them are Tories actually, but we don't have any contemporary art. No one painted that scene as it happened. But 85 years later, an American artist portrayed the scene that we're about to describe as an important moment in American history. The painting isn't exactly right, but hold on to that while we continue.

Abram: The painting's on a page. I can't exactly hold on to it.

Joe: The complex that Franklin's been wandering is known as the Cockpit, and was once an annex to Henry VIII's Whitehall Palace, where the Tudor monarch and his nobles would enjoy watching cockfights. Abram, do you know what a cockfight is?

Abram: No.

Joe: Good. A cockfight is a barbaric sport where they give chickens, like, special metal claws and have them fight each other. It is awful.

Abram: To the chickens, or—

Joe: It's awful to the chickens, and it's also awful that people would actually, like, bet money on which chicken is going to kill or injure the other chicken.

Abram: That's sad.

Joe: The point is, that was Henry VIII. This is a long time after Henry VIII. And we're going to imagine, as in this painting, that Franklin is in a large octagonal room that was once used for cockfighting. It adds to the drama!

Joe: Now, the room today was arranged for a meeting of the Committee of Plantation Affairs, the Privy Council's team responsible for the administration of the colonies. At a council table in the center of the room sit some of the most powerful men in Britain.

Joe: Franklin cannot help but notice that Lord North is absent, but his stepbrother, Lord Dartmouth—

Abram: William Legge!

Joe: —sits at the table. The Lord President of the Council stands over all of them to lead the meeting. Franklin recognizes most of the men, but as he casts his eyes around the room, he sees many less familiar faces. More than 35 Privy Councillors, plus clerks, lawyers, and other civil servants and even spectators are lining every corner of the packed room.

Abram: Are you sure this is an episode about Benjamin Franklin? It really seems like it. Hmm. Is this a disguised special?

Joe: No. Good. Franklin joins his counsel to stand by the fireplace. You might be wondering, why was Benjamin Franklin in this meeting? And apparently you're wondering, why is Dad spending so much time talking about a meeting with Benjamin Franklin?

Abram: And the answer is, he decided that he would put a key on a kite and electrocute himself.

Joe: Long before the Boston Tea Party, the Patriots of Boston wanted to be rid of their hated Governor Hutchinson.

Abram: So let me guess, they tied him with a key to a kite.

Joe: No, Benjamin Franklin actually did some other stuff. And one of the things that he did was that he found some scandalous letters by Governor Hutchinson and others that called for the abridgement of colonial liberties. And this is what that meeting is supposed to be about, but with the news of the Tea Party still very fresh, the chamber is actually crowded by men eager to make their feelings known about what had happened at Boston Harbor.

Joe: The Lord President calls the meeting to order, and a clerk begins reading the complaint. Abram, can you read these next lines in a droll, boring voice?

Abram: "We have before us certain papers from which it may be manifestly to appear that there has long been a combination of evil men in this province, who have formed a plan to raise their own fortunes and advance themselves to posts of power, honor, and profit at the expense of the quiet of the nation and to the annihilating of the rights and liberties of the American colonies."

Joe: There's a little cough at the door. As the door opens and Prime Minister Lord North enters the room, late. His eyes search for a chair at the overcrowded committee table before resigning himself to stand next to his stepbrother. The clerk continues.

Abram: "We pray that Your Majesty will be graciously pleased to remove the Governor and Lieutenant Governor from their posts, and place such good and faithful men in their stead as Your Majesty in your great wisdom shall think fit." Okay, I was aiming for droll, not quiet.

Joe: What do you mean by that? Just being bored. Like, "Oh, we pray Your Majesty will be graciously pleased to remove the Lieutenant Governor from—" Stop mimicking me.

Joe: Okay. After the petition is read out, it is the defense's turn to speak. Hutchinson was still in America, but he arranged to be represented by one of the government's most formidable lawyers, the Solicitor General. The Solicitor does not limit himself to defending Hutchinson. Rather, he turns his attention and all the anger and fury that had built up over three shiploads of destroyed tea in Boston to the one American in front of him, Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Kite Guy.

Joe: What follows is less a legal rebuttal than a verbal execution. You might even say, Abram, that it's for the benefit of Mr. Kite Guy.

Abram: You're funny, Dad.

Joe: For more than an hour, the solicitor accuses Franklin of conspiracy. He claims that Franklin is not just the discoverer of the letters, but rather an instigator that seeks to cast out the king's lawfully appointed governor. The room loves it. Laughter and taunts move through the audience. Councillors smile. Spectators call out at each insult as though they're watching a performance.

Joe: For our story, let's examine the three men in the center of this melee. Benjamin Franklin remains composed, his face expressionless to the taunts and jeers. He walked into the room expecting a fight, and this is still more vitriol than he expected. Even so, he refuses to give the room the satisfaction of a reaction.

Joe: Lord North stands quiet. He neither participates in the taunting nor does he stop it. He may be the adult in the room, but he is not the babysitter. He had already met with his cabinet and was planning punishments for Boston. This was just a sideshow.

Joe: Lord Dartmouth, like a few others, seemed almost to squirm in his seat. While the anger at the Tea Party is real, there are some sympathetic to the loss of English liberties. He became the Colonial Secretary to strengthen ties and improve trade, and this petty show of spite is not making anything better.

Abram: Put a pin in petty, please.

Joe: The outcome of the hearing is predictable. Franklin's claims are found to be groundless, vexatious, and scandalous. Franklin is fired from his official job as Deputy Postmaster General of North America, but he does get his way in a sense. Governor Hutchinson had already requested leave amid the deteriorating situation in Massachusetts. North would soon seize that opening to appoint General Thomas Gage as Hutchinson's replacement.

Abram: I recognize that name.

Joe: The commander of British troops in North America and a man capable of putting Massachusetts to heel. Politically, the meaning was unmistakable. The civilian government of Massachusetts is being placed in the hands of a man who commands the army. Boston's little defiance, London reasoned, would be over soon.

They Threw A Party and Invited All the Tea

Joe: Should we start with a recap, Abram? What do you remember?

Abram: Nothing.

Joe: All right, well, it has been months since we did Lord North, Part 1. And I don't remember what happened either.

Joe: So Frederick North, born in 1732, the son of Francis North, the future Earl of Guilford. There were ongoing rumors that Frederick was actually the illegitimate son of Prince Frederick, but it's never been proven. Frederick was the illegitimate son of Frederick.

Abram: Yes, I know. That makes sense.

Joe: Frederick North was the illegitimate son, or may have been the illegitimate son of Frederick, the Prince of Wales. Which is why he is named Frederick. North. Correct.

Joe: His mother died young and his father remarried, giving North his stepbrother, William Legge—

Abram: Yay!

Joe: —the future Lord Dartmouth. The family remained close to Prince Frederick and after his death, the future George III.

Joe: North's relationship with his father is difficult to understand. Their letters seem cordial, but his father kept North on a very short leash with money. So when North and Dartmouth traveled Europe together, they did so on Dartmouth's dime.

Joe: As an adult, North turned out to be serious about his work and great with money, rising through increasingly prominent Treasury roles. And by the time Prime Minister Grafton's administration imploded, North was essentially the number two man.

Abram: No one fights like Grafton. Make the song.

Joe: No one fights like Grafton. No one infringes rights like Grafton. No one parties that much all the night like Grafton. That's cool!

Joe: North's initial years as Prime Minister were successful at a time when even holding together a ministry for more than a year seemed impossible.

Abram: Or more than like 2 days.

Joe: He navigated the Falklands crisis, improved Britain's finances, repealed most of the controversial Townshend taxes on America, except for the tax on tea.

Joe: After the Bengal famine in India, North thought he had found a three-way win. America would get cheaper tea, the struggling East India Company would make more money by shipping directly to the colonies, and Britain could still collect the tea tax. And it might even have worked if it wasn't for a bunch of crazy Bostonians who protested against the move by throwing crates of tea in the harbor. Silly Bostonians. And that's where we are. The Boston Tea Party just happened and we're about to see North's response.

Abram: But they threw a party and invited all the tea. So you made up that quote. I said that quote and you decided you liked the quote after I said the quote, and now you use the quote.

Joe: Yes, you said it. That's an Abram quote.

Abram: No, you wrote it. It was a section heading. It was something that you said. But you wrote the quote itself.

Joe: I never wrote that. That is not me. That was an Abram joke.

Abram: I promise you, you did write it. At one point, they threw a party and invited all the tea. All right. That was a you quote that I made into a me quote and now is a section heading.

The Coercive Acts

Joe: On January 19th, 1774, news of the Boston Tea Party reached London.

Abram: They threw a party and invited all the tea.

Joe: George was angry, but he hoped the problem would blow over. Over the next several days, the details arrived and optimism disappeared. No more optimism.

Joe: Our Picture This took place just 10 days later. North remained quiet at the hearing. Meanwhile, he and his cabinet were already debating Boston's punishment. And those punishments are called the Coercive Acts in London. And do you know what they're called in the US?

Abram: No. The Intolerable Acts. Ah, I know that.

Abram: When third grade tried to brainwash me into thinking that the only way of looking at it was the US, the rightful, you know?

Joe: Yes. Well, third grade history is not the same as an adult-focused podcast with a British—

Abram: Yeah, I don't like that in the schools that you're pretty much taught that the US was good and the UK was bad and that was that.

Joe: Well, that's why we do a podcast, Abram. Yeah. Were you taught that too? Well, we're always given the American perspective. American! Because we live in the US. That is entirely—

Abram: That's sad.

Joe: That is more or less how you expect it to work.

Joe: So the cabinet described its objectives as taking, quote, "effectual steps to secure the dependence of the colonies on the mother country." So let's list them.

Joe: Okay. First, Boston's port would be closed. No more trading. And in fact, they would relocate the government, at least temporarily, to Salem. Yes, Salem is the spooky city. It is best known today for the Salem Witch Trials and for having really awesome Halloween parties.

Joe: Second, Massachusetts' charter would be rewritten to reduce self-government. The upper council would now be appointed by the Crown. The governor would gain new powers to appoint judges and things, and the town meetings would be restricted.

Joe: Third, officials or soldiers accused of serious crimes while enforcing the law could have their trials moved to England or another colony if they didn't believe the Massachusetts jury would be fair.

Joe: Fourth, the Quartering Act was strengthened. Soldiers could be placed in inns, barns, and unoccupied buildings.

Abram: Could they only be placed in unoccupied buildings, or could they just be placed in random houses?

Joe: You know, when we learned it in school, when I learned it in school, I was definitely told they could be placed in random houses.

Abram: Yeah, me too. That was what I was going for. But turns out, nope. They can be placed in abandoned barns, but they can't be placed in regular houses.

Joe: As best I can tell. From my research for this episode, the Quartering Acts never allowed troops to be in people's houses.

Abram: Yeah, that's a lie to make kids believe in the US's greatness a bit too much.

Joe: Well, it's an often repeated lie. There could be some truth to it that I can't find, but as far as I can tell—

Abram: But we both learned that they could just go to random people's houses, but turns out they can't.

Joe: As best I can tell. And finally, as we discussed last time, the Quebec Act was enacted. This doesn't always appear on the list of Intolerable Acts because it happened separately, but colonists basically lost their claims to the western lands. New rights for Catholics. North is going to do a lot of new rights for Catholics, but the colonies saw it as a punishment.

Joe: Massachusetts was also given a new governor. That's General Gage, commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America. And for all that the colonists had wanted to replace Hutchinson, few wanted a general at the head of their government. So did you learn about Gage in school?

Abram: No.

Joe: Okay.

Abram: The main thing is that I was taught that the quartering thing was much worse than it was.

Joe: Yeah. So these actions were not universally applauded in London. Dartmouth hoped for reconciliation and was not opposed to removing the Tea Act once stability had been restored.

Joe: John Dunning, an MP who had been one of Benjamin Franklin's lawyers in our opening, described the policy as, quote, "war, severe revenge, and hatred against our subjects." Mr. Drama.

Joe: But Lord North's goal was to force Boston to cave quickly and to warn the other colonies against acting out. Instead, piling on punishments hardened colonial resistance and rallied the other colonies behind Massachusetts. So who do you think will break first, America or London?

Two Continents, Two Elections, Two Approaches

Joe: With both sides of the Atlantic digging in, it is notable to me that both Lord North and the colonies themselves sought a representative mandate for what would come next. And they did it almost at exactly the same time.

Joe: In America, 12 colonies sent delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Do you know which colony didn't?

Abram: Rhode Island.

Joe: No, good guess though. Georgia.

Abram: Why?

Joe: 'Cause Georgia was loyalist and they did not participate in the First Continental Congress. They did participate in the Second.

Joe: Now how they selected those delegates was not uniform and there's stories about how different colonies got around British restrictions, but in the end, 56 men arrived in Philadelphia to organize a collective response to Britain's punishments.

Joe: In London, Lord North called an early election in September 1774 to build on his majority and have a mandate for handling the colonies. Now, we know how fair and representative British elections were at the time, but North ran the election and found that he could count on the support of 321 out of 558 seats in the Commons.

Joe: And while the representative bodies came together to discuss the situation on both sides of the Atlantic, General Gage in Massachusetts was seeing the problem from a different angle. He seized a gunpowder store outside of Boston in September, but thousands of Patriot militia members mustered and marched on Cambridge. No blood was shed, no shots were fired, but it was a close call and revealed to the shocked general just how prepared Massachusetts was to fight if necessary. Abram, in your history class, this might have been called the Powder Alarm.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Over the following weeks, Gage sent increasingly pessimistic reports to London. Massachusetts is slipping beyond my control. And the resistance went beyond the mob. Even respectable men with property and influence backed the Patriots. Gage asked for more troops, and he even suggested temporarily suspending the Coercive Acts. But the answer from Britain was immediate and no.

Abram: No.

Joe: In the colonies, the Continental Congress had decided to take two approaches. They would boycott British goods, but they're also gonna petition the King to ask him one more time, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please, come to our aid. King, you're not the bad guy. You're just being misled. You have bad counselors.

Abram: You're funny, Dad.

Joe: The petition arrived in a stack of papers, received no serious consideration, and the King sent no reply.

Abram: Oh, the beautiful king.

Joe: Now, North's posture here had begun to soften. He even floated the idea of sending a commission to America to investigate the dispute, but George III rejected it. Then Lord North turned his Treasury brain on the problem, proposing that the colonies could raise their own taxes as long as they contributed to the defense and civil government.

Joe: But while he was doing that, Lord Dartmouth—

Abram: William Legge!

Joe: —was pursuing coercion. Frustrated by Gage's caution, he sent instructions urging him to act against the Patriot leadership and to prevent the rebellion from spreading.

Joe: Neither North nor Dartmouth had a long-term plan at this point, exemplified by the fact that they just swapped which one of them was the hardliner and which one of them favored reconciliation.

Joe: And the muddy and inconsistent messaging out of London, both now and later, is a big reason why Britain's war effort is not going to be as successful as they would like. And the pattern started here even at the very beginning.

Joe: When Dartmouth's letter arrived in April, the next phase of the revolution kicked off. North's more conciliatory gestures arrived even later, after the fighting had begun.

Abram: There's fighting?

Lexington and Concord

Joe: In mid-April 1775, Lord Dartmouth's letter to General Gage arrived in Boston. But American intelligence was watching Gage carefully, and they knew something was up. But it's not clear whether they had intercepted a copy of the letter. In either case, the colonial militia braced for an attempt on John Hancock and the other colonial leaders who were staying in Lexington and well away from the military-controlled Boston.

Joe: We briefly discussed Paul Revere's midnight ride in our first Boston Bedtime story. But on the night of April 18th, Revere arranged a signal showing the British military was leaving Boston by sea—that is, crossing the Charles rather than marching out on Boston Neck—and then raced into the countryside to warn the militia and the colonial leaders.

Joe: Now, what happened next is a little confusing. General Gage did not order the soldiers to arrest Hancock and the Patriot leaders, but they actually marched, like, right by his house. The military just happened to be marching right in front of where Hancock was staying.

Abram: Couldn't they have just gone in and arrested him?

Joe: I'm not sure they knew. Oh. Instead, their aim was further along that northwesterly road to a colonial weapons stockpile in Concord. But when they arrived at Lexington Green, right in the path of the approaching column, they found the militia there. Dun dun dun!

Joe: Unfortunately, while no one's sure who fired the first shot, the Patriot militia was easily routed as the British continued towards Concord. Word of the fighting spread and many more militia members were waiting at Concord, resulting in the so-called "shot heard 'round the world."

Joe: At Concord, however, the mission began to fall apart. Much of the guns and powder had already been moved, the militia drove British troops back, and the British basically retreated to Boston under fire.

Joe: And I learned in school, and I don't know how true this is, but as the British troops were fleeing back to Boston, they were using so-called Indian tactics to fire from behind trees.

Abram: Yeah, I heard that too.

Abram: I'm not sure how true it is, but like, it doesn't sound something that's obviously fake. Yeah.

Joe: The point is that the British troops retreated all the way to Boston under fire. 73 British soldiers were killed that day, 49 Americans.

Joe: But this is the official start of the American Revolution, so we need to bring out our board. To help us keep track of the war, I have assembled for Abram a game board. We will mark and track the war as it progresses. For our game, we're going to simplify reality. We're going to mark a colony as being controlled if the British controlled the main ports. And in every case, the situation's more complicated. The Patriots usually controlled the rural areas.

Abram: Well, even at the beginning, there were still loyalist governors.

Joe: Blah, blah, blah.

Abram: Exactly. Blah, blah, blah.

Joe: I also want to say that we could spend weeks covering the American Revolution, but we're going to only hit the big points for what should be a story about Lord North. So some of your favorite stories, if you're an American, may be skipped or glossed over, especially if you know the history well.

Abram: How many tokens should there be?

Joe: There are 13 tokens. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Although we ended up making some more because I decided that there would be a couple more places on our map.

Joe: So Abram has a map in front of him and he has 13 tokens. Each token is red on one side and blue on the other. The red is for the Redcoats, the British. The blue is for the Americans, the Patriots, the Bluecoats.

Joe: So at the start of the war, we are going to mark that the Patriots— so mark in blue— the Patriots control every colony except Massachusetts.

Abram: So blue for every colony except Massachusetts? Yep. What about Maine?

Joe: Also blue. I have some, like, homemade ones there that Abram's mother, Dory, made all of our tokens for us.

Abram: Not the fish.

Joe: No, not the fish.

Abram: She does not want to be spelled like the fish.

Joe: Really? Yep. So Britain also controls Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida. So basically, you should have red on the Floridas and Quebec. You should have blue on all the colonies except Massachusetts. Let me know once you got all of your—

Abram: What's Florida? And on the map looks really dumb.

Joe: Yeah, the map is dumb, isn't perfect. All right, you got all your tokens set up? Good.

The Battle of Bunker Hill

Joe: First Continental Congress, that ended. Now we have a Second Continental Congress, and guess what? Georgia came this time. Welcome to the party. And the primary goal of the Second Continental Congress was to organize the responses of the colonies together as a unit.

Joe: And this Congress also tried a carrot and stick. In addition to forming a Continental Army and appointing a general you might have heard of, George—

Abram: Washing machine?

Joe: Exactly. George Washington as the general. They also wrote an Olive Branch Petition to request peace with George III. It was another, "Please, Mr. King."

Abram: We know you're good on the inside.

Joe: We know you're good on the inside.

Abram: Please support us. You're being misled. Help us, please. We love you, King.

Joe: So actually, Abram, you have a line here, you can actually read what the real petition said.

Abram: "The union between our Mother Country and these Colonies produced benefits so remarkably important that the wonder of nations was excited when they beheld Great Britain rising to a power the most extraordinary the world had ever known."

Joe: So George III is also going to refuse to receive this one. But it's important to note that even at this time, the colonies wanted to step away from the brink.

Joe: But although the Revolution is being led from Philadelphia, the key action is still in Massachusetts. General Gage declared martial law as a prelude to breaking the British Army out of Boston. Now, you might say, "Break the British Army out of Boston?" But remember that Boston was kind of like an island with a tiny little neck. There was no Back Bay at the time.

Abram: No Back Bay.

Joe: The same natural defenses that made the city really hard to attack also made it really hard to leave. And so while Britain controlled the port, they could not use that to gain a foothold anywhere else.

Joe: And this is where our second Boston Bedtime story came in. Gage attempted to cross the river and attack Charlestown, but was repeatedly rebuffed by the colonial militia who had fortified Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill. The British eventually captured the heights, but the militia simply withdrew to the next line of fortifications around Boston. And it was an expensive and ultimately hollow victory as the army remained largely pinned inside of Boston.

Joe: Abram, when I told you this story, I got the date wrong. And that's the drawback of the bedtime stories, which I did from memory because I could scrub some details.

Abram: Please, can we do a third one? Please? We know you're good on the inside, Dad.

Joe: Yes.

Abram: Yes, we can. Yay!

Joe: In a couple minutes.

Abram: No! I said a bedtime story.

Joe: Story. All right, if you like the bedtime stories, we will do more of them.

Abram: Yes, please.

Joe: Our listeners, I don't think, like them as much because they don't get as much traffic.

Abram: Spotify doesn't like them as much, not the listeners.

Joe: Yeah, probably. Don't blame them.

Joe: So George Washington arrived in Cambridge at this point to take command of the troops, and this is so legendary to people from our region that towns nearby have "George Washington passed here" signs. Our town does.

Abram: Yes, it does.

Joe: On the main roads leading to Cambridge. I mean, talk about hero worship. I don't even know what to say about that.

Joe: Across the Atlantic, news of Bunker Hill changed North's thinking. He told George III that the rebellion had grown so serious that it, quote, "must be treated as a foreign war." And so the king issued a Proclamation of Rebellion.

The War Cabinet

Joe: Although the war was still limited to a single city in Massachusetts, Lord North took it seriously and he reorganized. These changes mostly happened around November 1775, but for simplicity's sake, I'm going to cover them thematically rather than in order.

Joe: First and foremost— Abram, maybe you should keep a count of this.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Lord North offered to resign. This will be a running joke by the end of our episode, but at this point it was a sincere statement to the king asking if he still had his confidence to govern, and George's response was an emphatic yes. Or actually, George said, quote, "You are my sheet anchor, and your ease and comfort I shall in the whole transaction try to secure." George really likes North.

Joe: Well, while Lord North was staying put, Dartmouth would not remain Colonial Secretary. Lord North's government needed somebody willing to direct a war, and Dartmouth moved aside. He insisted on remaining in government, so he took on Lord Privy Seal, which had previously been held by Prime Minister Grafton. And Grafton resigned over the war.

Joe: Grafton actually is really smart here. He was never smart in our episode. He warned King George that the American troops, after a winter of training, could only get better and better. And as it turns out, he was right.

Joe: The new Colonial Secretary is gonna be someone called Lord George Germain. And he's gonna basically be the war secretary.

Abram: Is he German?

Joe: No, I don't think so.

Abram: We need to change his name.

Joe: I mean, really, George III is German, kind of, so who knows? So Germain is gonna be something like William Pitt was during the Seven Years' War, just nowhere near as good.

Abram: He's William Pitt but less good.

Joe: Yep. In America, Lord North fired General Gage because of his disastrous showing at the Battle of Bunker Hill, replacing him with General Howe. Have you heard of him?

Abram: No.

Joe: North's government also passed the Prohibitory Act, cutting off trade with the colonies and allowing any American ships to be seized as if they were enemy vessels.

Joe: But we need to return to the narrative because the Americans have decided that their first major act of the war would be to invade Canada.

Abram: Huh.

A Failed Invasion and Some Spare Cannons

Joe: Now we're up to one of the craziest single events in the American Revolution, in my opinion. A failed invasion of Canada.

Abram: What?

Joe: Now I should state that stupid people that still think that Canada should be the 51st state— Cut! We aren't getting into politics here.

Abram: Only British politics. Got it. No modern politics of any kind. So let's just cut that whole part.

Joe: All right, Palle Bo, cut it.

Joe: The Second Continental Congress feared that Britain could invade New England from the north, so they sought to prevent it by seizing forts in the Lake Champlain region and then working their way north. Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York was the first of those. We're gonna come back to that momentarily.

Abram: Yeah, that's the traitor one, right? Mm-hmm.

Joe: The traitor was there. Oh yes, Benedict Arnold was there. I cut everything about Benedict Arnold from this episode because this is already too long, but good on you for remembering that history.

Joe: By November, the Americans had captured Montreal and were closing in on Quebec City.

Abram: Dad, can you do a bonus bedtime story on Benedict Arnold, please? Yes. As a fourth one or third one or whatever.

Joe: Sure, if you want. Unfortunately, invading Canada in the winter is just about as stupid as invading Russia in the winter, and progress was slowed. It was not until the end of the year, December 31st, when the Americans fought the Battle of Quebec and lost.

Abram: So they fought a battle for the entirety of Quebec.

Joe: Well, they captured Montreal, and then they went to the capital, Quebec City, and they fought a battle there but were rebuffed.

Abram: You're going there.

Joe: No, I'm going to Montreal.

Abram: You're going to Montreal. Which is proudly Canadian.

Joe: Cut. No modern politics of any kind.

Abram: All right, Palle Bo, got it.

Joe: Some Americans went north expecting an easy victory and perhaps even a 14th colony, but they badly overestimated how much support they would find among the Canadians.

Joe: But there is one more element to this story that I'd intended to cover in another way. Abram, we just got back from Spain. You're very jet-lagged. Are you sleepy?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Oh, you know, why don't you put your head down? Good. Abram, let me tell you a bedtime story.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Once upon a time, there was a man named Henry Knox, and he liked to sell books in Boston. But he had recently joined Washington's Continental Army.

Abram: But aren't they only on one continent? How is an army on like 7 continents at once?

Joe: But with the British occupying his city and the army unable to drive them out, he made a suggestion to George Washington. Do you remember that fort we took at Ticonderoga? Remember they had those amazing cannons there?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Wouldn't it be great if they were here instead?

Abram: That would be fun.

Abram: But how are you going to move all of them?

Joe: Washington agreed and asked Knox to travel to Fort Ticonderoga himself in the middle of the winter to fetch them. He found 59 pieces of artillery, but no easy way to cross the 300 miles of icy and snowy mountains and lakes and rivers to get the cannons and artillery to Boston. Well, what was he to do?

Abram: Um, just get new cannons in Boston?

Joe: Uh, cannons are hard to build. 'Cause if you don't cast the cannons just right, like, they can explode.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: Henry Knox had an idea. He built sleds for the cannons and transported them that way.

Abram: They're going sledding!

Joe: He dragged those cannons over hills and rivers and lakes and through the Berkshire Mountains. He had several adventures along the way. And nowadays this is less than a 4-hour drive, but at the time it took him 56 days to make the trip.

Joe: And when Knox and Washington set up these formerly British cannons on Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston, the British realized they had to go. Their well-defended city on a hill became a bullseye on a hill. With all those guns in Dorchester, General Howe loaded the loyalists and soldiers alike on the ships and sailed for Halifax.

Joe: And this is the day that we still celebrate here in Boston as Evacuation Day, every March 17th.

Abram: Isn't that like St. Patrick's Day?

Joe: And it's entirely coincidental that it happens to be St. Patrick's Day. Which is a pretty convenient day to give Boston a holiday, especially given the prominence of Irish immigration in the early 20th century. And the fact that the law giving Boston that holiday for Evacuation Day was signed in green ink, well, that must have been a coincidence.

Joe: Henry Knox one day is going to become Washington's Secretary of War. And yes, Fort Knox, where we say we keep all the gold, is named for him.

Abram: Do you mean Henry Fox?

Joe: Nope.

Abram: I think he's dead.

Joe: Huh?

Abram: You killed him!

Joe: That is the story of Henry Knox and the cannons and the way they kicked the British out of Boston. The end. Okay, Abram. Abram, you gotta wake up now. It's time to switch Massachusetts over to the Patriots' side. I need you to go mark Massachusetts for the Patriot blue.

Abram: You know you can just flip them, right? I like using Larry the Lobster as a Larry the Pillow.

Joe: Yeah, Larry the Lobster is visiting us for recording today.

Abram: Yeah, not a manatee, but—

Joe: Hello, I'm Larry the Lobster. I'm a lobster and my name's Larry. Nice to meet you.

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident

Joe: If you look at your game board right now, it looks like the Patriots have won.

Abram: No, it looks like there's a big mess because the tiles are too big.

Joe: Okay, well, I didn't make a great board. Britain controls no American colonies. General Howe has fled to Halifax.

Abram: How-a-fax.

Joe: It's been a year now since the Second Continental Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition to London, and so their next message was a little different and a little bit more famous. Abram, I have something I need you to read, and I need you to read it in a patriotic way.

Abram: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Abram: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Abram: Yes, the United States just declared independence! Yeehaw!

Joe: An American history podcast would have a lot more to say about this, but we're a British history podcast, so we'll just say the word of the Declaration will reach London in a few weeks, and King George III is not going to like it one bit.

Abram: Well, that's too bad. He's going to have to get used to it. Considering he's going to live like 40 more years at least.

Abram: Next subject heading is The Empire Strikes Back. No Star Wars references, please. You won't record it? I know what to do.

Abram: The Empire Strikes Back! Good job, Larry.

The Empire Strikes Back

Joe: Despite what our game board says, Britain was far from done in this war. It's still just 1776. General Howe was no longer in Boston, but freeing him from Boston made him more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Joe: Okay, my Star Wars jokes are not only lost on Abram, but he's refused to do the subject heading, and he's never seen any of the films or shows.

Abram: You are not a failure.

Joe: Ah, it's a bad dad.

Abram: I like Avatar: The Last Airbender, though.

Joe: That's true. And the first strike of this new strategy was against New York. General Howe brought an enormous British and Hessian force into New York Harbor and he attacked George Washington on Long Island. Through Brooklyn and then Manhattan, Washington was pushed back again and again until the region was fully under British control and Washington was forced to flee to New Jersey.

Joe: Abram, will you please mark New York as being controlled by the British?

Abram: Okay.

Joe: And while you're at it, also do Rhode Island and New Jersey, because the British are quickly going to press their advantage.

Joe: Things are actually looking dark for America. There's a famous quote: "These are the times that try men's souls." And you would need a particularly brave general who would risk a winter attack across the Delaware River to be able to recover any of that territory. But before we see if America has one of those, we're going to nip back to Britain and see how Lord North is doing. How do you think Lord North is doing?

Joe: Abram is doing thumbs down. And yes, he is not doing well! It's a little tough to capture the mood, but the Declaration of Independence arrived in London in August. We know something Lord North doesn't. We just watched Britain capture New York. But his game board still shows the Patriots controlling everything. The good news of the New York capture is still somewhere in the Atlantic.

Joe: Lord North's health was starting to fail. By September, he's unable to stand. We hear one story where King George III urged North to sit in a chair while the king stood, which is both a shocking breach of decorum—

Abram: What year is this?

Joe: 1776.

Abram: Huh.

Joe: But also a reminder that these two men are very close. Later that month, Lord North falls off a horse.

Abram: Let me guess, he's dead.

Joe: And breaks his arm.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: But even sick, North was still North. He wasn't eating well, and he had lost a lot of weight. When his doctor asked him how he felt, the famously overweight Prime Minister joked that he could feel something he hadn't felt in years: his own ribs.

Abram: Bleh.

Joe: This was a lot of stress, and North is going to be bedridden well into 1777. And whether this is an illness or stress or both is difficult to determine now, but the key is that Lord North's health seems to parallel how Britain is doing in the war, and he absolutely needs to win. So let's talk about what Washington was up to.

The Crossing of the Delaware and of the English Channel

Joe: So if you know one American Revolution story, I hope you know Paul Revere. But if you know two, you probably know the crossing of the Delaware. This is a famous painting, which you've seen the painting, right?

Abram: Mm.

Joe: Here, give me your iPad. What's the magic word?

Abram: Larry the Lobster says give me your iPad.

Joe: Abram, have you seen that picture before?

Abram: Possibly. Is there a horse on the boat?

Joe: I think so.

Abram: What's a horse doing on a boat?

Joe: Sailing.

Abram: Huh?

Joe: Because how else would they get the cavalry across? Mm-hmm.

Joe: On Christmas night, 1776, Washington did the unthinkable. Rather than taking the winter or even Christmas off to recuperate, he crossed the icy Delaware River and launched a surprise attack on the Hessian forces at Trenton. Over the next 10 days, he won at Trenton and Princeton, forcing the British to pull back from much of New Jersey. Abram, move New Jersey back to the Patriots.

Abram: The Patriots don't play in New Jersey.

Joe: North's illness kept him away from parts of the final planning, and his divided cabinet approved two campaigns that were supposed to support one another. And this is not what happened.

Joe: So the History of Parliament books called the conduct of the war, quote, "a sad display of muddle and divided responsibility." The Army, Navy, and American policy were directed by different departments that coordinated poorly with one another, especially while Lord North was sick. If only the British generals were better able to coordinate, things might have turned out differently.

Joe: In Parliament, North, when he appeared, he looks pale and gaunt. He writes, quote, "I have never been so hurried and vexed as I've been for the last 2 or 3 months. Indeed, I am almost worn out with continual fretting. Nothing can deliver me but an honorable retreat."

Joe: He tries to resign again. George III says no. But this time, the King might have provided him with a special favor to keep him in office.

Joe: We spoke in our special a long time ago about how Lord North's father didn't support him financially. And despite being Prime Minister, North is actually very poor for his station. And this is the moment that George III steps in, pays down his debts, and helps him out financially. And some historians see this as a friendly gesture, where others see this as a lever to keep North in government when his every instinct and his own mental health is screaming for him to let anybody else do the job.

Joe: So Britain tries to march an army down from Canada. It's a disaster. They retake some forts, but they're bogged down before they even reach Albany, and then they're decisively defeated by the Americans at the Battle of Saratoga. 6,000 British and German troops surrender. An entire British army is off the board.

Joe: Meanwhile, General Howe, down in the middle colonies, he was going a lot better. He landed in the Chesapeake. He marched north through Delaware towards Philadelphia, which was at the time the capital and largest city in the United States. Washington tried to intercept him at Brandywine Creek and lost badly. And so the British took Wilmington and then entered Philadelphia. Congress fled.

Joe: Abram, please move Delaware and Pennsylvania to British control.

Abram: Aww.

Joe: I mean, we can't overstate how important this is. The British just took the capital of what will be or what is the United States. Congress had to leave. The British were coming. The British came.

Abram: Aww.

Joe: So Lord North doesn't know how to take the news. Britain is simultaneously winning and losing the war depending on which dispatch he picks up. He writes, quote, "How shall we mention America? Shall we be very stout? Or should we take advantage of the flourishing state of our affairs to get out of this *beep* war?" And yes, he actually swore. How often do they—

Abram: Get him out of here!

Joe: Get North out! How often do they actually swear in writing? I mean, oh my God.

Joe: What had him so worried wasn't just what was happening an ocean away, but also a channel away. Abram, do you want to guess what's happening?

Abram: They're arguing over TV stations.

Joe: Word had reached London that Benjamin Franklin and some American ambassadors—

Abram: Got struck by lightning—

Joe: —had arrived in Paris.

Abram: What's he doing there?

Joe: He wasn't just shopping for baguettes.

Abram: He wasn't baguette sword fighting either. So— He was getting their help so they could help him. They eventually agreed, and that's why the Americans won the war. 'Cause there was also fighting going on in England itself. The end. Time to do the rating.

Joe: You're bad.

The Power of Friendship

Joe: While all this is going on, by the way, this is the next famous George Washington scene. He and his troops are going to winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. They're going to play the "Make a Man Out of You" song every day on repeat until his fighting force was as well trained as any movie montage could ever provide. So it's essentially the movie montage part of the war.

Abram: Correct.

Joe: But for our podcast, what is important isn't what's happening in Pennsylvania, it's what's happening in London and Paris.

Joe: In London, Lord North is not doing well. On January 29th, he wrote to George III about himself in the third person, quote, "The anxiety in his mind for the last two months has deprived Lord North of his memory and understanding." And of the ability to speak in the first person, apparently.

Joe: North pulls together a peace deal. He decides that the Continental Congress is a legitimate body that he can talk to. He has a bill for a commission that passes Parliament, and commissioners are actually gonna be sent to Philadelphia to negotiate peace.

Joe: His proposal would have given the colonies much of what they originally demanded before independence: an end to taxation from Parliament, substantial self-government, and recognition of Congress. And in exchange, they just had to not be independent. And if Americans had accepted that, we'd be in a very different world.

Joe: But in France, there was a different kind of deal. France agreed to ally with America against Britain, signing a treaty on February 6th, 1778. Benjamin Franklin was one of the signers for America wearing exactly that same Manchester velvet suit that he wore to the disastrous meeting we discussed at the beginning of the episode.

Abram: Why would he be wearing British products?

Joe: Because he's practically British. Okay, continue.

Joe: To say that Lord North did not take this well is an understatement. And he attempted once again— What do you think he did?

Abram: He resigned.

Joe: He tried to resign.

Abram: This is becoming a running gag.

Joe: He told the king that death itself would be preferable to the stress that he was under.

Abram: So why didn't he just get executed right there?

Joe: So I'm not even going to bring them all up, but he's going to try to resign over and over and over again. But the king never lets him.

Abram: Why?

Joe: Well, Lord North says, quote, "Your Majesty's service requires a man of great abilities and who is confident in his abilities and can choose decisively. I am certainly not such a man."

Joe: Poor North. You just have to start feeling really bad for him because he wants to leave.

Abram: But the king, that mean king, won't let him go.

Joe: Well, George III responded that North was not merely his minister, but his friend.

Abram: That's very deep.

Joe: And North is actually really fearful of what would happen if European powers entered the war. He said, quote, "The condition of this country is deplorable. It is totally unequal to a war with Spain, France, and America, and will be overmatched. Great Britain will suffer more in the war than her enemies, by an enormous expense which will ruin her."

Joe: France is now in the war, so are North's predictions gonna hold true?

The Seven Years War, Part Two

Joe: So when North's peace commissioners arrived in British-occupied Philadelphia in June 1778, they were shocked by what they saw. Rather than staying and consolidating their gains or pressuring the Congress-in-exile to negotiate, the British were preparing to leave because the French threat was greater than the American one.

Joe: Philadelphia was evacuated and the army consolidated around New York as their base of operations.

Abram: Dad, can I flip Pennsylvania?

Joe: Yes. While British forces that could have been fighting the Americans were diverted to protect the many islands and colonies now under threat of French guns.

Joe: Britain struggles to defend everywhere at once. American forces take key forts in Illinois Country. France takes Dominica. Britain strikes back, seizing St. Pierre and Miquelon in the northeast, St. Lucia in the Caribbean, Pondicherry in India, and they even manage to take Savannah, Georgia, and Penobscot Bay in Maine. So you can mark Georgia and Maine as being British.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Even though they're winning, they're being spread very thin. If they had just one more bit of bad news, Abram—

Abram: The British?

Joe: They might break. So what do you think happened next?

Abram: William Legge dies.

Joe: I don't know when he died, actually. We should look that up.

Abram: I am right now.

Abram: Okay, so he died in 1801.

Joe: Yeah, so that's not the bad news, Abram.

Abram: What's the bad news?

Joe: On June 21st, 1779, Spain declares war on Britain.

Abram: Dun dun dun!

Joe: And now I'm gonna give you the secret tokens.

Abram: What?

Joe: I have just handed Abram a whole bunch of yellow tokens. Which will be used to mark Spanish control.

Abram: Okay.

Broken North

Joe: The day before Spain declared war on Britain, Lord North's two-year-old son died. Children died a lot back then, but that didn't make it any easier on the parents. North could not even give himself time to grieve. Leading a cabinet meeting the following day, he declared that Spain entering the war would not force them to make a dishonorable peace.

Joe: But it was a lot. On June 25th, 1779, Lord North broke down crying in the House of Commons. He regained his composure after a time, but everything that had happened, all the stress that he had been under, and the death of his son, they were all just too much.

Joe: Britain is now trapped defending everywhere. Spain wants Gibraltar. France just took Grenada. George Washington now has more freedom of movement and options than he's had since the start of the war.

Joe: One of his friends calls North, quote, "the most altered man I ever saw in my life," continuing, "He has not spirits set to anything."

Abram: Just get him out of here.

Joe: He received a report about rebelliousness in Ireland in June 1779, but he hadn't even read it before the winter.

Joe: By the autumn, North was increasingly alone. Lord Gower resigned, then the Southern Secretary.

Abram: Huh huh.

Joe: He's trapped in a job that he doesn't want, and he's losing a war that's rapidly spiraling out of control.

Abram: Poor little Northy.

Joe: The whole of the British Empire that had been won in the Seven Years' War seems on the verge of being lost.

Joe: When January rolled around, Lord North was well and truly broken. He is the center of everything and keeps having more work handed to him as his cabinet falls apart, but he can't deal with it. One friend says, "*Beep* him. Nothing can goad him forward. He is the very clog that loads everything."

Abram: Why do they want to beat him?

Joe: By spring 1780, his government suffered a humiliating defeat in Parliament.

Abram: The Battle of Parliament.

Joe: John Dunning carried a motion saying, quote, "The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." Dunning is not blaming North for their troubles. He is blaming King George. Which does not prevent North from trying to resign again, and which the king rejects again.

Abram: At this point, he should just reject the king's reject.

Joe: You know, it's tough to do. On the bright side, Britain just managed to capture Charleston, South Carolina. So mark that as British on your board.

Abram: It's British? Charleston?

Joe: Charleston.

Abram: That's how it's pronounced currently.

Joe: Charleston.

The Election of 1780

Joe: On the home front, some long-term tensions are about to boil over. In 1778, Lord North's government passed the Papist Act, otherwise known as the Catholic Relief Act. From our perspective, this is great. It rolled back some of the discrimination against Catholics. Allowed them to inherit land, purchase land, allowed them to join the military. Similar measures were also being enacted in Catholic-majority Ireland, but it was brutally unpopular to Protestants.

Joe: And it's difficult to understand now, but remember how hard they had fought to keep a Protestant monarch through the Stuarts. And so any backsliding feels very painful. Catholics also historically favored the Jacobites, but at this point they're no longer an active concern.

Abram: Like, the last Jacobite that actually claimed to be Jacobite died in 1807, but it wasn't really a thing after, like, 1745. Yeah, pretty much. Like, they still claimed it up until 1807, I think.

Joe: I think you're right.

Abram: I did research this for a side project that I'm not going to do, but they didn't really claim it after around this time, I think, was the last time anyone really tried. Yeah. And even then they weren't active.

Joe: Still, something called the Gordon Riots broke out in June 1780.

Abram: Were they related to anyone named Gordon?

Joe: Yes, it was related to someone named Gordon, but I don't remember how now. It began as an effort to force Parliament to repeal Catholic relief and then exploded into days of violence across London. Eventually, North had to send in the army to restore order, and he did. But it never looks good when you have to send the army after your own people.

Joe: With the good news from South Carolina and with London now pacified, Lord North decided that now was the right time for an election. He called it suddenly, hoping to catch the opposition off guard, but it backfired. North emerged with a Parliament that supported him even less than before. He still had control, but much less control.

Joe: This unsuccessful election impacted North's health even further, and he even missed the King's Speech and the start of the next session of Parliament.

Joe: And to add one more log on the fire, Britain decides to declare war on the Dutch.

Abram: That's the dumbest move ever.

Joe: Abram is facepalming.

Abram: It's— Where's the orange?

Joe: There is no orange because they don't ever claim anything, so I didn't make any orange.

Abram: Do you think orange would be Dutch?

Joe: Yeah, orange is 100% the color I would have used. Yes. So they were secretly aiding the war anyway, so it's not really a change, but it means that it's now Britain against the Americans, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch.

Abram: Oh no, this is like that meme with the dog, like, "this is fine." There's like a dog in a house that's being like on fire and he just says, "This is fine."

The Battle of Yorktown

Joe: So the next stage of the war, and the final stage for Lord North, happens very quickly. First, Britain captures Wilmington, North Carolina. So mark North Carolina as controlled on your game board.

Abram: The British have an advantage.

Joe: Yeah, they're coming up through the south. General Cornwallis starts marching into Virginia.

Abram: Oh no, I have to mark it.

Joe: No, he doesn't get Virginia yet.

Joe: But at the same time, Spain is attacking. It captures Pensacola and takes West Florida and the Gulf Coast, which I see you have already placed the tokens on.

Abram: I did that a long time ago.

Joe: France captures Tobago. So then General Cornwallis establishes a base at Yorktown, Virginia, expecting the Royal Navy to keep him supplied and protected. But Washington and the French rush south and surround him on land while the French Navy defeats the British Navy in the Chesapeake, and they seal off his escape by sea.

Joe: General Cornwallis realizes that he is trapped and tries to break out, but he fails. The surrounded general surrenders.

Abram: No more war.

Joe: Well, there is still a war, but this is a turning point, as the most important field army in America has just been taken captive. The date: October 19th, 1781. Britain is forced to abandon all of their recent winnings. They lost Virginia. They lose North Carolina. They lose Delaware. Can you mark those?

Abram: Delaware? Dela-there.

Joe: Britain still controls important territory, but it's lost much of its fighting force. France has demonstrated that it can challenge the Royal Navy. Spain is stripping away the Gulf possessions. The Caribbean war continues, but the battle to retake America, pretty much lost.

Joe: As Americans, Abram, we are taught that Washington won the war.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Which he did. He was brilliant in the way that he feinted that he would attack New York, and then he quickly repositioned troops to Virginia to take on Cornwallis. But it was also the combined might of every one of Britain's enemies attacking everywhere that finally made the problem impossible to deal with.

Abram: I know the French joined in, but I didn't know the Dutch and Spanish technically joined in. I didn't know that they're actually in the war.

Joe: They are. And there's a lot more going on than I am covering here, right?

Abram: This is— I'm surprised Portugal didn't join on the side of the British.

Joe: Yeah, well, we have so many things happening. We are summarizing however many years of war, like 5 at this point, in less than one episode. Like, if we were an American history podcast, this would be like a whole series. So there are things I'm skipping, but the important thing is this is the war. This is what's going on with North.

Joe: And in January 1782, Lord North agreed that peace was the way to go. He said, quote, "Peace with America seems necessary, even if it can be obtained on no better terms than some federal alliance. Or perhaps even in a less eligible mode."

Joe: So North is admitting maybe—

Abram: We lost.

Joe: Like maybe they won't be completely free. Maybe we can still control them a little. Of course, that won't happen.

Abram: No.

Joe: George III is slow to agree, but the Commons votes against continuing offensive war in America that February. There's a final shakeup of North's cabinet as the Colonial Secretary is forced out, but it's just rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

Joe: Lord North resigned as Prime Minister on March 20th, 1782. This time, George III didn't stop him. He said, quote, "He ever did and ever shall look on you as a friend as well as a faithful servant."

Joe: And I'm just thinking, oh my God, Lord North can finally take a break.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: At the conclusion of his time in office, Britain still controlled New York, South Carolina, and Georgia. Spain hadn't yet taken all of Florida, while Canada was still secure. That will be the problem for the next Prime Minister, or the one after that, or the one after that, and then—

After Office

Joe: It is our custom to only summarize what happened after our subject's time in office as we finish the rating.

Joe: There is an attempt to put North on trial for losing the Revolution, but that goes nowhere. Britain actually does better over the next couple of months in the war, which allows them to get a better peace deal, and we'll discuss that in our upcoming Prime Ministers.

Joe: The big thing that happens comes in April 1783 when North and Charles James Fox, the son of the hated rival Henry Fox, made peace with each other, and then they supported Portland's government, William Cavendish-Bentinck.

Abram: Bentinck!

Joe: William Cavendish-Bentinck. I don't have to know how to pronounce it yet. We will cover him soon. Not that I pronounce anything correctly in this podcast.

Joe: Lord North returns to office briefly as Home Secretary, but that government falls in 7 months, and there's very little there that I know of that we want to include in the rating.

Joe: George III saw the alliance with Fox as a personal betrayal, shattering their friendship and ensuring that North would never again have a role in government.

Abram: The end.

Joe: Almost. In 1786, Lord North began to go blind.

Abram: Oh no.

Joe: In 1790, his father finally died. So that means he finally gets to inherit the title. He is now the Earl of Guilford. He finally gets the family fortune and he finally joins the House of Lords. But he doesn't get to enjoy it very long. 'Cause he dies in 2 years.

Abram: Ooh. What a final insult, his father not dying for 2 years before he did. And he was, like, blind.

Joe: Yes.

Abram: Was he fully blind at that point?

Joe: Pretty blind by the end. When did he die? He died August 5th, 1792.

Abram: I just feel bad. North's father died 2 years before he did, and he was going blind at that point.

Joe: Yeah, his life kind of sucked. Like, you feel bad for the guy. And that is the sad end of Frederick North.

Rating

Abram: Rating!

Joe: All right, Abram, our first category is accomplishments, and we can rate him up to 20 points each.

Abram: I really think that he won't score that highly on this one.

Joe: Well, remember we had like a good-years episode, right, where he successfully dealt with the Falklands crisis? Yeah. He arranged that law, the Quebec Act, that ensured that Canada would stay loyal. So were you trading in 20? He also gave Catholic people more freedom. That was good. I'd say he accomplished a decent amount.

Abram: It's just, its disaccomplishments overweigh it. I'm not saying—

Joe: We'll get to the dises in a minute.

Abram: Yeah, but without regarding the disaccomplishments, I don't think he did a lot, like, compared to most of them throughout his time, throughout 12 years. He really only did two things that were like accomplishments. The Falklands thing and the Catholics thing. Yeah. Yeah. There's a few more, but like those were the big ones. 8.

Joe: So out of 20?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: I was going to go 7.

Abram: Okay. I was torn between 7 and 8, so I'm glad that you went 7. So he gets 15 out of 40 for that category. Yep. All right.

Joe: The next category is disaccomplishments. And we can score him up to -10.

Abram: On what? On what he undid. Well, let's see. He undid the colonies being in Britain.

Joe: He undid the colonies.

Abram: He undid Protestants' happiness. Well, yeah, I'm not gonna—

Joe: I'm not rating him down for that. I mean—

Abram: He undid his mental health. That's true. That's true.

Abram: Though I think that's more fault on George III for not letting him leave for like 5 years.

Joe: I mean, honestly, I think a lot of this really falls on George III. Lord North had said many, many times that he wanted to leave, that he wasn't the right person for this job, and George III refused to let him go.

Abram: I do think he did lose a lot in the colonies.

Joe: He still gets the blame for losing the colonies. I mean, maybe, maybe we are polite and don't give him the full 10 because he tried to resign so many times.

Abram: Yeah, I'm going to go a bit nicer on him. I'm going to go 8. Just because he tried to resign. It's a big thing losing the colonies.

Joe: Yeah. So just by way of comparison, we gave Grafton -7.

Abram: Why? Scandals?

Joe: I mean, yes, for scandals. He got a lot of points for scandals. I mean, he disaccomplished something. I guess we also blamed him for stuff. So you're going -8?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: What about you? I actually think -8 feels right. Like, when I came into this, I was thinking, oh, we're going to give him -10 here for losing colonies.

Abram: But he did try to leave.

Joe: He really didn't want this job. If his boss had only allowed him to leave or even to give him help— there was a point which I didn't cover where he said, please make somebody else the Chancellor of the Exchequer so I can focus on this. But George III said no. Yeah, it was tough. So negative 8.

Abram: So negative 16. Negative 16. Okay. What's the next category?

Joe: The next category is bad personality, and we can rate him up to or down to negative 10 each. And I don't think he cheated on his wife. I mean, how much bad did he do?

Abram: George III could get so much for this.

Joe: Yeah, you could say that, like, the Coercive Acts weren't great, but I mean, he was responding to the Tea Party. But like, none of the normal scandal stuff applies.

Abram: There's— I'd say zero for this.

Joe: Yeah, I don't think I can give him bad personality points. Yeah, zero for both of us. Okay.

Abram: And then how interesting his life would be as a movie.

Joe: How interesting would it be as a movie out of 10 each?

Abram: This would be interesting. Just a tortured man.

Joe: It is.

Joe: It's like a tragedy. It's— this is Shakespeare.

Abram: Yeah, he does die at the end.

Joe: So he does. He goes blind. He finally gets the title and the property. This is a really good— and he joins the House of Lords and then he dies. Yeah.

Abram: This is another 8 for me. This is one of the better movies.

Joe: I'm actually going to go—

Abram: I think this would work better as a play, but still would get an 8 for a movie.

Joe: I mean, with the backdrop of the American Revolution, I might go 10 here. I'll go 9.

Abram: I would give it a 10 if we were judging on how well they'd work as a play, because I think a play would be a bit better because you can sort of extra emphasize comedy, if you know what I mean.

Joe: Mm-hmm. So 19. 19 points for how interesting their story is.

Abram: Out of 20. His story is interesting.

Joe: So next we have how he looks. Let's see. And this, we score him 10 each and divide by 2. And we are going to use the same portrait we have been using here. Let me bring it up. And we're doing the portrait of him in these sort of gold-trimmed robes. He looks fat. He is fat. Remember, we talked about that.

Abram: This is a horrible one. Can I see? He looks sick. It looks like they didn't reschedule when he got a cold and he's about to throw up.

Joe: Yeah, possibly. Let me find out when that picture was made.

Abram: Do you agree that—

Joe: I agree. So this portrait was painted between 1773 and 1774. So this is before even the worst of his illness.

Abram: Ugh, he just looks so fat and his cheeks are fat. It looks like he ate too much candy.

Joe: Well, I don't like to sort of discriminate against the overweight, but—

Abram: It just isn't a good way to make the portrait.

Joe: So how many points out of 10 do you want to give him? Gold looks cool.

Abram: 2.

Joe: 2 points. And I am going to go, hmm, 2 as well.

Abram: That's a total of 2 points.

Joe: That's a total of 2 points. All right, now he gets the gimme points. His lifespan.

Abram: He gets points for being alive.

Joe: So how old was he when he died, Abram?

Abram: 60.

Joe: So that means he gets 6.0 points for lifespan.

Abram: So that means he gets a total of 42 minus 16, so 26 points.

Joe: Just validating on the spreadsheet. Yes, Abram is faster than my Excel.

Joe: All right. We have a very, very important question to ask.

Abram: Known or ice cream cone?

Joe: Wow. We do not do enough of these ratings. We're going to need to just, like, blast out a whole bunch of rating episodes soon. Yeah, this is a tough one.

Abram: How I interpreted this is he's an ice cream cone, but we do feel a bit bad for him.

Joe: So we have 3 options, right? And really, we have known and ice cream cone.

Abram: But we have a third secret option. Well, that we've technically used before.

Joe: Well, no, we have George Grenville got known for being bad. Yeah. And Charles Watson-Wentworth Rockingham got a special prize.

Abram: Yes, he got a special prize.

Joe: And I don't really want to give a lot of people that prize.

Abram: But I do think that North is a bit deserving of that prize.

Joe: I was actually thinking that North probably is known for being bad. So like he and Grenville, right? Like the Revolutionary War— like the Revolutionary War Prime Ministers that we know.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Okay, so you want to give him the prize, the special ice cream cone prize, the one that Prime Time doesn't know about? Oh, they know about it now because they finished their Rockingham episodes.

Abram: So, okay, so we can call it what it is.

Joe: The Lord Bath Memorial Prize.

Abram: Yup. We borrowed it from Prime Time. We also give those out.

Joe: Yes, it is the rating that we give when we kind of like the person, but we don't want to make them known. And I have to agree, like, Lord North is such a tragic figure. Like, his dad might not even have been his dad, and then he didn't die, and then he went blind, and oh my God.

Abram: Yeah, I think that we give him a special category known for being bad with Lord Bath Memorial Prize.

Joe: Okay, so, but that is important though. Is he known and will be in like the—

Abram: He's in the same category as Grenville, I feel like.

Joe: Okay, so Grenville is known for being bad.

Abram: But he gets the prize. He gets both.

Joe: Yeah. Okay, fine. Do you agree with that? Because don't forget, at the very end of this series, when you're like 130, we will have a set of rounds where we have all of the knowns compete with each other.

Abram: I do think that he is a known for being bad. And he also gets the prize.

Joe: All right, well, congratulations then to Lord North.

Abram: Having such a tragic life that we had to give you points.

Joe: Congratulations, Lord North. You are known for being bad.

Abram: We feel bad for you and give you points. We give you the Lord Bath Memorial Prize.

Joe: And we feel so bad for you. You had such an awful life. Yeah. And you get blamed for something forever.

Abram: You did do a little bit, but like, not— you shouldn't get blamed as much.

Joe: Right. We made a mistake. What did we do? We haven't done a rating in a very long time. And?

Abram: We forgot their term score.

Joe: Oh no. So—

Abram: But don't you literally have a spreadsheet in front of you and you're doing it?

Joe: Yes, I do literally have a spreadsheet and it literally had a box there and I literally didn't look at it. So we rated Lord North 26. Yep. When in fact he is 38.

Abram: 38 and tied for 5th place.

Joe: What?

Abram: Yes. Better than average?

Joe: He is better than average. Okay, that's too bad. Well, I think it just goes to—

Abram: I think it's just because his life would make a perfect Shakespearean play. Yeah. That's really the only reason.

Joe: I think we had a lot of fun with them, but I just wanted to let you know that we got that wrong, and that's it.

Joe: So with that, we are wrapping up this episode. Abram, next time—

Abram: You'll be telling me a bedtime story about the traitor.

Joe: I will tell you a Benedict Arnold bedtime story, yes. We will be having a very brief episode on—

Abram: Recapping.

Joe: Recapping and finishing up what Rockingham did, Charles Watson-Wentworth, in his final couple months as Prime Minister. We already rated him, but we're going to have a chance to see if you want to change any of his rating.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: And then we'll get into a very rocky time for Prime Ministers for at least a little while. Yeah. So with that, we're so grateful that you joined us.

Abram: We like doing this.

Joe: You should say this is Prime Factors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't forget to like and subscribe and follow us on things and comment. And Abram, say good night.

Abram: Good night.

Bibliography

Joe: I hope you enjoyed our coverage of Lord North. We had a lot of fun with this episode and with covering the American Revolution in total. Abram told me after our recording session tonight that this is one of his favorite episodes to record, so I am in high spirits. I feel like I won.

Joe: I also hope that you guys enjoyed our two Boston Bedtime specials between this and the Tea Party one. We also included that third Boston Bedtime story that we had planned embedded in this episode.

Joe: I know from our traffic reports that these episodes are being skipped by many of our listeners, and that's okay. It seems to be some combination of some podcast apps skipping short episodes thinking that they are announcements or trailers, or perhaps some of you are just not as interested in specials. All of that is fair.

Joe: That said, Abram really loves recording these and is asking for a couple more. I'm gonna try not to overdo it. It looks like I need to research Benedict Arnold next, but I may intersperse another bedtime story here and there. I do hope you're enjoying them, and if you skipped over them, it's all good, but I hope you'll give them a listen. They are a lot harder because I have to memorize things. I like having a script.

Joe: In terms of sources, I bought a collection of American Revolution books but ended up using very little of them. There is so much information on every battle and every skirmish and every general and every campaign, but at the end of the day, it didn't support our goal of talking about Lord North. While some of that reading definitely ended up in my head while writing, most of the content from this episode comes from our regular sources.

Joe: That is "Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America" by Peter Whiteley, written in 1996, and "Lord North" by Reginald Lucas, published in 1913. I also leveraged a number of online sources on American history, a couple things on different battles, on the crossing of the Delaware. Just when I needed to fill in a detail or two.

Joe: I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. We certainly did. With summer vacation coming to an end, I'm looking forward to a more regular release schedule, if we ever manage that. Next time, I hope, will be a brief Rockingham epilogue before we jump on to the next Prime Minister, William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne.

Abram: We'll see you soon.

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