Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

12.0 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (Part 3): “Rockingham Epilogue”

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12.0 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (Part 3): “Rockingham Epilogue”

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Charles Watson-Wentworth.

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

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram. I'm here with my dad. We're reviewing all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Andy Burnham. I have to get used to saying that even more often. This episode—

Siri: Andrew Murray Burnham is a British politician.

Abram: I know!

Siri: Prime Minister—

Abram: Shut up!

Joe: Why is Siri answering who the Prime Minister is?

Abram: This is episode 12.0, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Epilogue. Wait, shouldn't it be 12-infinity or something?

Joe: No.

Abram: It's an epilogue.

Joe: I didn't want to discuss this on the pod, but North was part 11. Shelburne is part 12, but where do you put Rockingham, who was like, huh, 7 or 8 or something?

Abram: You put—

Joe: So we're calling this 12.0.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Abram, at the end of Charles Watson-Wentworth, Part 2, we very quickly dashed through the remainder of his life and his second premiership.

Abram: This episode, they end at the same time, right?

Joe: Yes. This episode is a quick recap, a deeper look at his political life since we saw him last, and his second premiership, and all to set the stage for the next Prime Minister.

Joe: So Abram has been doing his homework. Last night, he reread the scripts to Rockingham Part 1 and Part 2.

Abram: Just Part 1.

Joe: Or rather, the transcripts, so that he remembers all of his jokes.

Abram: I'm pretty sure that woodworkers will be back in this episode. Will we rate him again?

Joe: Not exactly. So we're going to talk about the scoring and pencil process at the end of the episode. But there are, it turns out, a lot of Prime Ministers with multiple terms and some of them are a lot later than each other. So we're going to need to come up with a better way of dealing with it.

Abram: Or we could just do a lot of confusing epilogues.

Joe: Or we can do a lot of confusing epilogues.

Abram: And eventually it'll get to the point where we'll be doing like three a Prime Minister sometimes.

Joe: Epilogue 1, epilogue 2.

Abram: It'll be like Prime Minister, Prime Minister, another Prime Minister, Prime Minister 1 epilogue, Prime Minister 2 epilogue, Prime Minister 3 epilogue, Prime Minister 4 epilogue. And like, uh, uh, uh, glitching noise. It would just get to the point where they're all epilogues.

Joe: All right, well, the last time we talked about Charles Watson-Wentworth, Rockingham, Sam was our editor. And so anyone that's listening to this one, like back to back to back, if they see, oh, another Rockingham episode, I'll listen to it right away, they're gonna have a bit of a jump in the style, but that's all good.

Abram: 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: Since this is a special episode, we're going to have fun with this. We've had some of our friends at Primetime record our Picture This.

Abram: Okay, good.

Joe: Abram, I need you to do the honors.

Picture This

Rob (Narrator): Lord Rockingham in The Adventure of the Cragg Vale Coiners!

Rob (Narrator): Our adventure opens in a small office at Wentworth Woodhouse. Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquess of Rockingham and Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, sits beneath the anachronistically stenciled sign of Rockingham's Detective Agency, smoking a pipe and wearing, for reasons best left unexplained, a deerstalker. Across from him sits a nervous young man, Robert Parker. The Marquess speaks first.

John (Rockingham): I can see from the mud that you've tracked on my carpet that you've come rather urgently from Halifax, Mr. Parker, in a post chaise with a misshapen right front wheel.

Rob (Parker): Why, how could you possibly know that, my lord? Never mind.

John (Rockingham): Pray tell, what brings you to my doorstep at such an hour?

Rob (Parker): It's this.

Rob (Narrator): Parker removes a small gold coin from his pocket and places it in Rockingham's outstretched hand. The Lord Lieutenant studies it briefly, then weighs it in his palm.

John (Rockingham): Fascinating. It is, of course, a recently minted British guinea, worth a pound and a shilling. An awfully inconvenient denomination, I must say. And yet you can see the chips on the edges here, here, and here. All well hidden. Someone has been shaving our King's currency!

Rob (Parker): Now look at this, my Lord.

Rob (Narrator): He hands Rockingham a second coin.

John (Rockingham): Why, it's a gold moidore! A Portuguese coin, and quite popular here in the North where good London coinage can be hard to come by. But look at this! The Portuguese coat of arms on the reverse is incorrect! This coin is a forgery!

Abram: Dun dun dun!

Rob (Parker): Indeed, my Lord. We believe counterfeiters in Northern England are shaving the edges off good British coins and using them to mint fake Portuguese ones, then passing the British coins back into circulation. They're creating money.

John (Rockingham): And yet, your haste is hardly due to a few shaven shillings.

Rob (Parker): All true. You see, my Lord Rockingham, our investigator in this matter, William Dighton, was just murdered.

Abram: Woodworkers!

Rob (Parker): He had tracked down the miscreants and got shot for the trouble.

John (Rockingham): We haven't a moment to lose. The game is afoot!

Rob (Narrator): Rockingham rings a bell to summon his fastest carriage.

Rob (Narrator): Sometime later, Rockingham and Parker arrive in Halifax. The church bells ring out for the arrival of their Lord Lieutenant and one of the richest men in England, and in this story, a detective.

Rob (Narrator): Quickly, all the resources of a very rich and well-connected detective are brought to bear in the small city. It's easy to be the world's greatest detective when you're filthy rich. Informants are paid and the dead man's family supported. Villains in the north see the circle closing in on them.

Rob (Narrator): At a nearby spooky castle, a chase ensues between a group of detectives with a dog and a group of counterfeiters. Somewhat impossibly, when they run into a door on the left, they emerge from a door on the right, all while exciting music plays. But in the end, they catch their man.

John (Rockingham): Now, let's see who the ringleader really is!

Abram: Woodworker!

John (Rockingham): Why, it is none other than King David Hartley, the Napoleon of counterfeiters!

Rob (Parker): What's a Napoleon?

Abram: He's a three-month-old living in Corsica.

Joe (Hartley): And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for the Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the West Riding of Yorkshire!

Rob (Parker): But, uh, we knew it was Hartley the whole time. He's called King David, after all. He lives in Cragg Vale. He was arrested ages ago. Your friends with the dog just caught him in York Castle, where he was being held.

Rob (Narrator): Rockingham pauses, looking for words.

Abram: Jinkies!

John (Rockingham): Then why did you need me?

Rob (Parker): Because nobody would testify, my lord. But with your resources and the backing of the King, we were finally able to find witnesses who were unafraid to speak. Thank you.

Rob (Narrator): Rockingham looks stunned for a moment, then recovers, placing his deerstalker back on his head.

John (Rockingham): Think nothing of it. It was elementary. Now let's go home. I want to pet my moose.

Recap

Joe: Abram, what do you remember about Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham?

Abram: His story involves woodworkers.

Joe: Your version of his story certainly involves a lot of woodworkers.

Abram: It involved sixty-foot men, who I called the giants.

Joe: Yeah, that's true.

Abram: And a whole lot of horses, I think.

Joe: Yeah, he had a lot of horses. That is also true.

Abram: And the woodworkers were in the Wentworth Woodhouse.

Joe: All right, you've got all of the important stuff down. Let me tell you the unimportant stuff that you missed.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: So Rockingham, the future Rockingham, was born 1730, the son of a wealthy Yorkshire family. He was not expected to inherit anything, but his two older brothers died before he did, and that's how that worked.

Abram: Like, they used bloodletting, I think, right? And it might have resulted in their deaths.

Joe: Was he the bloodletting family or not? I don't remember, but it very well could have been.

Abram: He was, I think.

Joe: Yeah. Their ancestral home is Wentworth Woodhouse, as you said. At 15 years old, he was made a colonel in his father's Yorkshire Blues regiment during the Jacobite Crisis. And he got really upset when he didn't get to fight any Jacobites.

Joe: The Jacobites, like, marched past Yorkshire to get into England. And then they retreated past Yorkshire to get back to Scotland. And he was like 20 miles away at the nearest. And he got really upset he didn't get to fight any Jacobites. So he marched up north to Scotland and showed up on the Duke of Cumberland's doorstep saying, let me into your army. And Cumberland sort of patted him on the head and didn't let him be in the army.

Abram: Because he was like 15.

Joe: Yes, because he was like 15.

Abram: He's barely older than me. I'm like, Dad, may I pretty please join your army, please?

Joe: No. Why?

Abram: I wanna fight some Jacobites!

Joe: Why?

Abram: Please, please, can I join your army?

Joe: Please? No, no. You're a rich boy, and rich boys just look pretty on the sidelines.

Abram: But I wanna fight Jacobites! This is what I'll do to them! Ow! Please!

Joe: Sit down. We're going to send you back to your father.

Abram: No, please! Wah!

Joe: All right.

Abram: Okay, continue.

Joe: His father died 1750, and he inherited the family fortune. So when he turned 21, he threw a gigantic party with 10,000 guests. And this was kind of a coming out party because this was also him joining the House of Lords.

Joe: Now, Rockingham was far better at Yorkshire politics than national, and he took his role as Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire very seriously. And that's gonna be kind of a recurring thing in his life. He's a very important man in Northern England, able to get things done that the faraway powers in London can't, but he's not as good, or at least wasn't as good, navigating national politics. And when he wasn't doing politics, he was doing horse races. He owned more than 500 horses.

Abram: I remember. He owned too many horses.

Joe: Yes. Good job.

Abram: Now, can I join your army, Dad, please?

Joe: No. When George Grenville's government collapsed after the Stamp Act, the Duke of Cumberland tried to pull together a government. So he's like, you can't join my army, but why don't you join my government?

Abram: Oh, I would have rather the army.

Joe: He sought out Rockingham, who was at that point a horse racing buddy, and made him the First Lord of the Treasury, but maybe not the Prime Minister, at least not in terms of power. But Abram, do you remember why that didn't work out for him?

Abram: Woodworkers?

Joe: No, Cumberland died three months later. And that would have been a weird thing, right, where you had like essentially a royal as Prime Minister, and they don't even count him as Prime Minister now. It's all Rockingham.

Abram: Primetime.

Joe: Primetime did count him as a Prime Minister, but Wikipedia doesn't even count him as a Prime Minister.

Abram: Doesn't count him as a disputed Prime Minister either.

Joe: Correct. Yeah.

Abram: Which I think they should have at least done that.

Joe: Yeah. Honestly, without getting off track, I think there's a very reasonable case to be made that Cumberland was Prime Minister for like three months. But the people that set up the Parliament lists later in the 1800s really didn't want to have a royal as Prime Minister. So boom, Rockingham's it.

Joe: All right. He repealed the Stamp Act, which the colonies liked, and he passed the Declaratory Act, which they didn't. And Abram, do you remember which one the Declaratory Act is?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: That's the one that said, we decided not to tax you this time, but we haven't decided that we can't.

Joe: Now, Rockingham's time in office was brief because much of his cabinet didn't really see him as Prime Minister. They had wanted Cumberland. Future Prime Minister Grafton resigned, trying to bring Pitt in. And while Rockingham survived a bit longer, it eventually worked. Rockingham's government fell, and that's pretty much where we ended his story the last time. That was 1766. Huh?

Abram: That was before 1770?

Joe: Yes. We have 16 years and three Prime Ministers.

In Opposition

Joe: I'm not going to tell this story over again. I promised Abram this would be a short recap.

Abram: So we can record Help after.

Joe: Because Abram's behind on his Beatles podcast. The first thing is that Rockingham, while out of office, consistently positioned himself as a friend to the colonies. He knew what it was like to run a region far from London. And while Yorkshire was not quite as far as Boston, I think he had a little bit of respect.

Abram: That's a massive understatement.

Joe: I think he had a little bit of respect for finding the right distance between the people and the crown. He pushed against the Townshend Acts, of course, when William Pitt was ill, and for speaking out, the Massachusetts legislature called him, quote, "a patron of the colonies and a friend of the Constitution and the rights of mankind."

Joe: I can never resist sneaking in a little bit of local history. But in London, honestly, Rockingham's power was waning. His pull with the Whigs decreased under Chatham and Grafton, and by the time Lord North entered the picture, his attention was elsewhere. In 1770, Rockingham essentially stepped away from politics to care for his wife, who was ill at Bath. She got better. In fact, she's gonna outlive him. But it took a couple years.

Joe: Lord North in office, King George III had something that hadn't been true of British politics in some time. He had a friend. And while North is called a Tory today, at the time he didn't call himself that. But regardless of what he was called, North believed strongly in the authority of the King and generally saw his job as carrying out the King's wishes, whereas Whig leaders like Rockingham worried about the growing influence of the Crown over Parliament. Under Lord North's long premiership, the King had a reliable minister and more influence than Rockingham thought healthy.

Abram: But didn't North say he wanted to leave like three times?

Joe: Like 30 times.

Abram: I wanna leave, I wanna leave, I wanna leave, I wanna leave. Yeah.

Joe: Like, the Revolution hasn't started yet, so this is still during North's kind of successful early period, where he did a whole bunch of good stuff and then the Tea Party happened and then North— basically was not a good wartime minister. He might actually have been a great peacetime minister.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Now, Britain doesn't have a written constitution like the United States does. So whenever politicians in Britain talk about the constitution, they mean kind of a slowly assembled history of precedent in their country stacked up over centuries. But even if it wasn't written, it was still very important to people like Rockingham.

Joe: He wrote, quote, "I fear indeed the future struggles of the people in defense of their constitutional rights will grow weaker and weaker. It is much too probable that the power and influence of the crown will increase rapidly. If we do not exert now, we may accelerate the abject state to which the constitution may be reduced."

Joe: So Rockingham, under Lord North, was very worried that the King was essentially going to gradually become an absolute monarch, which is something that England had fought against for a long time and might even have chopped off someone's head for it.

Abram: Was it the woodworkers?

Joe: No.

Abram: The Roundheads won.

Joe: All right, Abram, I know that the rule is no modern politics.

Abram: Yes, that is a rule.

Joe: But I'm going to bring up a parallel, a little one. In 1773, Lord North's government backed a proposal to tax absentee landlords in Ireland. If you were a lord with land in Ireland that you didn't live on, you'd have to pay a larger tax. Rockingham was the Earl of Malton in the Irish peerage and would've had to pay this tax, so he fought against it and the proposal was abandoned.

Joe: And actually, this is something going on in New York City right now. They just enacted a tax on expensive homes that aren't used as somebody actually living there. And there are important differences. New York's decision is being made by New York and not a faraway government in another country. But it was a little fun parallel.

Abram: You went over your time limit.

Joe: Fine. That's the end of my local politics. The point was that Rockingham is a liberty-minded noble, but he wasn't a saint and he preferred not to pay higher taxes.

Joe: Rockingham sought out like-minded people in Britain and beyond. He met with Benjamin Franklin in May 1771.

Abram: That's the kite guy.

Joe: The kite guy, yes. He grew closer to Edmund Burke. And the Rockingham Whigs may have been down, but this fear of the encroaching power of the King was something that many of the Whig factions could agree on.

Lord of His Domain

Joe: All right, we already talked about a lot of Rockingham's non-political things after his premiership, but I wanted to remind you of a couple.

Joe: First, when seamen in Hull went on strike in 1769, Rockingham intervened and helped them negotiate higher salaries. He was a man of the people. And yet, he once forgot to pay the staff at Wentworth Woodhouse for two years.

Abram: Oh no! No, I think that might cause something.

Joe: Yes. And then he fired like a massive number of them because—

Abram: Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. This is not looking good for him.

Joe: So here's the thing. I'm not sure whether these stories are connected or conflated, but supposedly he fired a whole bunch of his staff because they were stealing things that he was buying for his house and then selling it.

Abram: That sounds like the woodworkers.

Joe: And like, that's terrible. But if it was during the time when he forgot to pay them for two years, maybe it's not so bad.

Abram: Yeah, this is funny. I don't think he should have done that. I think that they're going to try and get revenge in some way.

Joe: So the most interesting thing about this period, other than him building a zoo on his estate—

Abram: What?

Joe: Other than keeping a moose at his house in London, other than tinkering with heated gardens so that he could grow oranges in Britain year round—

Abram: This guy is weird.

Joe: —was the counterfeiting operation that we talked about at the beginning of the episode. And other than the Scooby-Doo and Sherlock Holmes references, the story happened pretty much like I described. There was a coin clipping epidemic in Halifax. Rockingham was frustrated by London's inaction, especially after authorities struggled to get convictions. And then William Dighton, the investigator, was murdered. He managed to secure a pension.

Abram: What happened to William Dighton, do you think?

Joe: Well, he was murdered by the people that they were trying to arrest that were not—

Abram: Woodworkers!

Joe: Counterfeiters. His leadership galvanized the crackdown that finally dismantled the criminal network. And all the woodworkers have now been arrested.

Abram: Oh, no. Those woodworkers.

Joe: So while I would love to chat with you a little bit more about Northern England and the moose that lived in London, some Bostonians just threw a bunch of tea in the harbor.

Abram: Okay, now is the perfect time. Can I please join your army? Can I please? I need to fight against these Bostonians.

Joe: Give it a minute. I think you're going to be happy how this works out for you.

The American Revolution

Joe: In the opening moments of the American Revolution, Rockingham was ill. And so we don't, or at least I don't, have any direct reaction from him to the Tea Party itself. But we do know that he opposed the Boston Port Bill and that he wrote that he would never support force against the colonies. I think it's safe to say that he didn't like the Intolerable Acts, even if I don't want to guess whether or not he approved of throwing tea in the harbor.

Joe: But as things got hotter and hotter, Rockingham continued to do a great job of taking care of his own lands.

Abram: Now that the woodworkers are gone, that should be really easy.

Joe: So Rockingham had always been a quiet supporter of Catholic rights. But he embraced this more publicly as the decade went on. In 1774, Irish Catholics were permitted to take a new oath of allegiance to the King. And then in 1778, Rockingham backed the Catholic Relief Act in Britain and a similar act in Ireland.

Joe: And this allowed Catholics to be more involved, to join the army. Lots of good stuff from our perspective, bad stuff from their perspective at the time, because the Protestants in London and Scotland rioted. But looking back, pretty good move.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: In 1779, the American Revolution going poorly for Britain, an American naval commander named John Paul Jones was even able to bring ships and raid the British coast.

Joe: Okay, so if you can imagine like the American colonies being completely on the back foot a couple of years previously and Washington struggling to hold on, and here in 1779, they have ships raiding England. So Jones appeared off the mouth of the River Humber, and he threatened the shipping around Hull. And Hull was defenseless. Rockingham, finally able to be the military leader—

Abram: Yes, can I please, please, please, please join your army?

Joe: Well, sit down.

Abram: Please.

Joe: Because it's not as simple as that. It's not about Rockingham joining the army or the navy. It's about him being really, really rich. And instead of joining the military, he bought six new cannons. He paid for 20 more cannons to be recovered from a sunken ship. He built a militia in Hull, which presumably he let himself lead.

Joe: In fact, he built a whole bunch of militias. He built at least two that I know of in Ireland. He made up for not being allowed to join Cumberland's army by making armies, making little militias, certainly.

Joe: And while John Paul Jones never attacked Hull, it might have been— probably wasn't really— but it might have been because Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham, had armed Hull because London hadn't. And actually this story, like, I heard that the cannons might not even have been delivered when John Paul Jones left, but still, it's a good story.

Abram: This guy is good. Did we give him the Memorial Prize?

Joe: Yes, we did.

Abram: Okay. He deserves it more.

Joe: Okay. So—

Abram: I like this.

Joe: After that moment, I have a little bit of comedy for you.

Abram: What did he do?

Joe: After he defended Hull by buying or recovering a total of 26 cannons, Hull refused to pay for it.

Abram: I think Hull was being led by— what would I say?

Joe: Workers. In any event.

Abram: But now, now can I please do an army?

Joe: Yes, congratulations, you've just made the Wicklow Volunteers, a local militia organized to protect Ireland against France while Britain was otherwise distracted by the American War.

Abram: Happy guy.

The Next Generation… and an Old Guy

Joe: As Lord North remained in power and the war turned against Britain, the Whigs had a crisis of leadership. So many of the key leaders that we talked about earlier in our podcast, Abram, they're gone. Remember the Temple faction and Cobham's Cubs? Both George Grenville and his brother, Richard Grenville-Temple, the Lord Temple, are dead.

Abram: What happened to, um, what happened to—

Joe: They died of old age. They're not Cubs anymore.

Abram: What happened to the second guy, the brother?

Joe: They're both dead. Lord Temple had no surviving kids. So it was George Grenville's kids that would basically take over the legacy of the family. I think you know about William Grenville, but at this point he's only like 20, maybe 21. And his elder brother, George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, is going to continue the family tradition of acquiring estates and making his name extra long.

Abram: Ha ha, you're funny. Let me guess, it was originally started by the Gren family and the Ville family and the Tem family and the Pool family.

Joe: William Pitt the Elder, also dead. So the Chatham faction's lost its leader. His eldest son John decided not to go into politics. He went into the military life. And his younger son William was still a teenager. Oh, so he's going to be a big deal soon.

Abram: Who?

Joe: William Pitt, the other one.

Abram: Yeah, nothing major is going to happen to him, right?

Joe: Right.

Abram: Right, right, right.

Joe: And at this moment, in fact, the only former Prime Ministers still alive are Bute, Rockingham, and Grafton. Bute remained one of the most hated men in Britain.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Grafton was rebuilding his reputation, but he lacked the support of most Whigs. And Rockingham was the acknowledged leader of the largest group of Whigs.

Joe: And that isn't to say there weren't some new names. The hated rival Henry Fox— he's dead. But his son, Charles James Fox, is an up-and-comer in Parliament. And by the 1770s, he had moved into Rockingham's orbit and was becoming one of the leading Rockingham Whigs in the House of Commons. So keep that in mind.

Joe: William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne, he was a rising star. He had served as the Southern Secretary under William Pitt and had emerged as basically the leader of what was left of the Chatham faction.

Abram: What year is this?

Joe: We're in like 1780.

Abram: Around 1780.

Joe: Yeah, we're getting close to the end of North's premiership, which is why I'm introducing who all these people are. And one problem: Fox and Shelburne did not like each other. Remember William Pitt and Henry Fox hated each other. So now, like, the descendant of William Pitt, the Chatham faction, and the descendant of the Fox faction, they still hate each other.

Abram: Oh. Do you know that, like, Napoleon and, like, Arthur Wellesley's descendants, like, they're famous for fighting and then their descendants work competing banking firms or something?

Joe: That's amazing.

Abram: And it's really funny in my opinion.

Joe: Anyway, this rivalry between those two is going to be very important in a second. So you should probably keep them—

Abram: What?

Joe: —in mind.

Abram: It's not important yet, Dad.

Joe: Okay, great.

Abram: You said it was in a second and I counted a second.

Joe: As the revolution dragged on, Rockingham was among the last of the old guard. And in 1780, the opposition managed to get its rallying cry passed by the House of Commons. Quote, "The influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."

Abram: Dad?

Joe: Yes?

Abram: I'd say we've entered a full new era since the beginning.

Joe: Oh yeah, yeah.

Abram: When did— when was the last Prime Minister in the old era?

Joe: I was thinking about this.

Abram: In like the era of like Walpole, Pelham-Holles. That sort of era. Pitt is sort of in both eras, but that's about it.

Joe: Yeah, it's tough, but there's definitely— at this exact moment, right, this transition of the American Revolution is almost a passing of the torch because we're gonna be seeing the kids of some of those early prominent people being like the new prominent people.

Abram: So I'd say like 1770 was around the transition.

Joe: Sure.

Abram: What about Henry Fox? What happened to him?

Joe: I mean, he died. I just don't remember all the details.

Abram: Yeah, I think that Walpole was sort of on his own because he lasted so long, but I think Compton and Pelham set up the generation who've mainly been focusing on— if, like, Pitt, Fox, those guys. Do you know what I mean?

Joe: It's kind of tricky because we went through so many so quickly. You know, George III had Newcastle, then Bute, then Grenville, then Rockingham, then Chatham, then Grafton, then North, all in like a span of like 10 years. Yeah, it just went very fast. And now we've had this long pause because North is essentially Prime Minister for what, 12 years?

Abram: Yeah. So he wanted to be for like five.

Joe: By the time North is done, like, the clock—

Abram: I feel like I would say that Grenville or Bute were possibly the last ones to have the original characters sort of active, but it's only now when they're actually dying and their kids are sort of taking over.

Joe: Yeah. The point was that the Whigs at this time are coming together in a new generation to say that the influence of the Crown is encroaching on their liberties and the liberties of Parliament, and that the mess that's happening in America, at least from Rockingham's view, showed what would happen if Britain tried to maintain its authority by force.

Joe: He didn't think that Parliament didn't have authority over the colonies, but he thought that trying to maintain that authority through violence or coercion would be disastrous.

Joe: Taken that way, Rockingham's declaration, March 1778, that American independence should be recognized, and his later statements that the war could not be won by arms, can be read as a statement of Whig philosophy at the time, but maybe taken to an extreme.

Joe: After the Battle of Yorktown, the writing was on the wall for American independence and the end of the premiership of Frederick North. North could no longer reliably command the Commons, and finally the King was forced to look to the opposition for a new government. George III really didn't want Rockingham, but there were few good options, and fewer still that he liked.

Joe: And in a way, Rockingham might have been the only choice, but he came with a catch.

Abram: What?

Joe: He refused to become Prime Minister. Do you want to guess what his—

Abram: If he couldn't be in the army?

Joe: No. The opposite, in fact. He refused to become Prime Minister unless the King agreed to recognize American independence. So maybe it's not North's fault that they lost the colonies. Maybe it's Rockingham's.

Abram: Yeah, but he wanted them to go in a way.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. George III agreed. He actually considered abdicating rather than admit the colonies were lost. He tried to convince Shelburne to helm a government, but he refused. So I think we'll talk about that maybe next episode.

Joe: But in the end, there was only one choice, and the King wasn't happy. It would have to be Rockingham. And on March 27th, 1782, Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham, took up the reins in Downing Street for a second time.

Joe: This time, Rockingham was not selected because he was a poor substitute for Cumberland, but because he was a leader in his own right. And I hope that he gets a long and successful premiership out of it.

Prime Minister Again

Joe: You have to give Rockingham credit for a lot, but at least one thing: when he retook the government, he built a government of Whig superheroes, basically all of the Whig factions all combined so that he could have enough competent leaders to basically push out all of North's appointees, right?

Joe: So the last 12 years, North's government controlled everything end to end, and he had a lot of positions that he needed to put back in Whig hands. They also came to office with a shopping list of things that they've been dreaming of doing for the last decade. So let's talk about who he brought.

Joe: First, former Prime Minister Grafton is now Lord Privy Seal, what we were calling the elder statesman role.

Abram: And didn't you like consider putting this into his episode, but you decided against it?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, he didn't do that much. He might have matured, he might not have matured, but at least he's back under the Whig umbrella.

Joe: Rockingham reorganized the Secretaries of State. So it used to be a Southern Secretary and a Northern Secretary. Now there is a Home Secretary and a Foreign Secretary. And this would hopefully reduce the conflicts over who managed what and allow the country to have a more stable control over foreign affairs.

Abram: So is the Home one like Great Britain and Ireland?

Joe: I'm not sure how Ireland fits. And actually, you're hitting exactly part of the problem.

Abram: Is Ireland home or away?

Joe: Well, a better question: are the colonies that are currently negotiating a peace treaty, are they foreign or home?

Abram: Hmm. Glitch noises.

Joe: Yeah, that's going to cause some problems in the next episode. So William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne, is going to become the first Home Secretary. So the Chatham faction is brought in. Check. Oh, and you might want to put a pin in him.

Abram: That would hurt though.

Joe: Charles James Fox is going to be made the Foreign Secretary, and that puts one of Rockingham's strongest Commons leaders in one of the biggest jobs. So check.

Abram: Who else?

Joe: I could mention a few others. There's this guy named William Cavendish-Bentinck.

Abram: William Cavendish-Bentinck.

Joe: Yeah, he's gonna be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, so he's kind of important. John Cavendish was Chancellor of the Exchequer, so the old Cavendish and Devonshire connections are back into government. The point is that he was putting in people that didn't always like each other and that he was managing them through his leadership.

Abram: Should we put a pin in that Bentinck guy?

Joe: Yeah, you might want to put a pin in him too.

Abram: That would hurt.

Joe: Yep.

Abram: Oh, and by the way, you're going to have some difficulty with him because his gap was— guess how long?

Joe: I don't know.

Abram: 26 years. Yeah. Yeah. Have fun.

Joe: Well, we're going to talk about that in a minute.

Abram: Luckily, no one after him is as long. Use the longest gap. Epilogue 1, epilogue 2, epilogue 3, epilogue 4.

Joe: And so while Rockingham came in to wind down the war and tell the Americans they could be independent, that didn't happen immediately. And at this point, Britain is at war with France and Spain and the Netherlands. And if he just stands up and says, "Stop, stop," and they're winning, do you think they're gonna stop?

Joe: No. Abram shakes his head no. So in fact, while he was Prime Minister, France just captured St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat. Britain needed peace quickly to keep from losing more territory. And Rockingham and his ministry didn't get very far with that before what was about to happen happened. Cough, cough, cough, cough.

Abram: Oh no.

Joe: But he had some really successful stuff. He backed Gilbert's Act, which reformed poor relief and allowed parishes to work together to provide workhouses and support for the poor. Cough, cough.

Joe: He passed Clerke's Act, which prevented people holding government contracts from sitting in Parliament. So the government can't hand someone a contract to, say, supply weapons and then have that same person sitting in the Commons supporting the government, right? That's a conflict of interest. Cough, cough.

Joe: He passed Crewe's Act, which prevented government employees from voting in parliamentary elections, reducing another way that they could influence rotten boroughs. Cough, cough.

Joe: He also pushed Burke's Civil Establishment Act, which eliminated or reformed a whole collection of government offices that the Crown could use to reward supporters. Like, the King can no longer give people jobs to keep them loyal to the King. That one actually didn't land till after his death.

Joe: But all of these things that he had done reduce the ability of the Crown to control Parliament through jobs, contracts, patronage, corruption, and government influence. And for Ireland, he repealed the Irish Declaratory Act of 1719, restoring the independence, at least largely, of the Irish Parliament. Cough, cough, cough.

Abram: Oh no.

Joe: In May 1782, he started feeling unwell.

Abram: When did he come in?

Joe: He came in March 27th, 1782. And like two months later, a flu epidemic was sweeping through London, and he wrote, quote, "I have for some weeks past undergone much pain and much inconvenience from something similar to my old complaint in my side and stomach. The learned whom I have consulted do not allow that there is any reason to suspect that mischief is advancing. And so far their opinions seem to be well-founded, as I think on the whole I am now much better than I have been."

Joe: Abram, he was not much better than he had been. He died July 1st, 1782, at 52 years of age.

Abram: His death is really suspicious.

Joe: Honestly, he did more in his brief second time as Prime Minister than I think he did in his first. And the government made one of the strongest attacks yet on the Crown and corruption and patronage and influence.

Abram: Do you think that the woodworkers, since he stopped paying them, they sided with the King?

Joe: Could be.

Abram: And you know what happens when you mess with the woodworkers.

Joe: We do.

Abram: I think that's what happened.

Joe: With just a little bit of different luck, Rockingham could have served as Prime Minister for years, uniting the Whigs and leading a restoration of Whig power. Instead, his brief time kicked off another few years of instability that's going to lead to a very different political reality in Britain. But we'll get there.

Joe: And that, Abram, that catches us up to the present. Rockingham's two Secretaries of State, Fox and Shelburne, hate each other, and they were only able to work together with Rockingham as the glue. So we're gonna have to see how that rivalry falls apart now that Rockingham is gone. But for now, let's talk about ratings.

Rating… In Pencil

Joe: So, Abram, this is kind of a discussion, but in the American system, there's only two presidents with non-consecutive terms, and they're never more than four years apart. But in Britain, as you know, and as I'm realizing is much harder than I thought it would be, there's sometimes 26-year gaps.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: There's several Prime Ministers that come back again and again and have large gaps, as you say. So we need to discuss how we're going to do this, and this is my proposal. We still do it on a case-by-case basis, but we agree that some Prime Ministers get ratings in pencil. So we cover their first term, we rate them in pencil, and then when they come back, we have a follow-up, and then we can talk about the rating again and change it and do that until they're out of office.

Abram: I think that would work well. You got my approval.

Joe: I do want to be careful. I want to tell their complete stories. And with Rockingham in specific, I thought that I didn't need to cover his second term very much because it was so short. But I think in retrospect that was a mistake.

Abram: Yeah, I think his rating would have very much been boosted by it.

Joe: So speaking of that, we're going to travel back in time. And then you say rating.

Rating

Joe: So Abram, we're not going to rate from scratch here, but I'm going to tell you what we rated him before in each of the sections and we can talk about whether or not we agree.

Joe: So in accomplishments, you gave him 13 and I gave him 10, and we can go back through why we gave him that.

Abram: But what, what, what do you give him now?

Joe: I personally did not appreciate his second term accomplishments enough. I did not realize how much he had done in order to attack corruption and attack some of like the more endemic problems. I was not aware of how prepared he was for the second term. And maybe it wasn't just him. Maybe it was Burke and others.

Abram: But I'm giving him 15 now.

Joe: So I'm also going to bump my score up by two. So you are 15 and me 12.

Joe: Abram, for disaccomplishments, we both gave him -2. We blamed him for the Declaratory Act that helped push away the American colonies, but we basically said he was better than Grenville and better than—

Abram: I don't think I'm gonna change this, to be honest.

Joe: Yeah, I don't want to change this either. I think -2 is still the right amount.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: In bad personality, Abram, you gave him -1 and I gave him -2. He was a party guy. But he came into his own later in life. He's a little bit like Grafton, but with a work ethic and talent.

Abram: I don't think this one needs to change.

Joe: Nope, I'll leave that the same as well. Now the next section is how interesting his life story was.

Abram: This is silver screen.

Joe: Yes. And we each scored him 7 here.

Abram: So does him coming back only to be defeated by the sickness that may or may not have been caused by woodworkers, the call of nature— I think it would make it more interesting because, like, I think that he could have really been able to have gone a lot further had he lasted more than five months.

Joe: Yeah, I think so too. So I'm inclined to give him one more point.

Abram: Yeah, I would say yeah.

Joe: So 8 and 8. And to be clear, that makes him as interesting as Robert Walpole, as Henry Pelham, and as Frederick North, right? And that feels right, I think.

Joe: Now for looks, his looks didn't change. I don't think we want to change his score.

Abram: And for the rest, they're data-based, right?

Joe: Yep. So we will just keep the looks score.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: And lifespan is still—

Abram: He didn't live longer because of this.

Joe: He's still 5.2. He didn't live any longer. And his term is still 1, because he did not make it a full two years even with his second term. So that gives him a revised score of 46.7.

Abram: What was his old score?

Joe: His old score was 40.7. So he's gained 6 points.

Abram: I think that's fair.

Joe: It does not change him in the rankings. Like, he didn't pass anyone. But I think it's still a good move.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: And we now have one more question to ask. For the second time.

Abram: No, no ice cream cone.

Joe: Last time we gave him an ice cream cone with a Lord Bath Memorial Prize. But I'm kind of still okay with that. What do you think?

Abram: I don't know. He did mess around with the crown power.

Joe: Yeah, but he was only back for like four months. And I think I have a lot more respect for him, but I'm not sure I would give it to him. But I am also happy if you want to argue it.

Abram: I'm not in the mood for a fight, so I think we should keep that the same.

Joe: All right. So congratulations, Charles Watson-Wentworth. You have gone up by 6 points today, but you are still an ice cream cone.

Abram: No.

Joe: But we're very glad that we had an opportunity to talk about you.

Abram: Thank you for listening to Prime Factors. I'm Abram, and I've been here with my dad. We've been reviewing all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Andy Burnham, and this was episode 12.0, Rockingham Epilogue.

Joe: So Abram, great episode. All I have to say is, it's a beautiful day. Say good afternoon.

Abram: The woodworkers are coming. We have to hide. We have to hide. Also, can I please, please, please join your army? Please, please, please, please, please, please! I can fight the woodworkers for you, please!

Joe: Goodbye.

Abram: Please, please, please, can I please join your army? Please, please, the woodworkers, they're coming! I can beat them up, please, please, please, please! Can I just beat the woodworkers?

Bibliography

Joe: I have a confession to make. I do not have as good of a source list as I usually do. This was all assembled from work that I did back when doing the old Rockingham episodes, and at some time in the last year I seem to have lost track of what some of the online sources and things were.

Joe: I'm fairly certain that my primary source was The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham by Ross J. Hoffman, published in 1973, but I'm sure that there's other stuff. I just kept all my notes and used it to assemble this, and I did not have good source marking. Anyway, this is what I get for writing an episode based on notes that I took more than a year ago.

Joe: Hope you enjoyed this transitionary episode. Next time is going to be William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne. And the last time we had a Prime Minister come in because the previous one was unhealthy, it didn't work out so well. So I guess we'll see. See you then.

John: And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of the County of York, of the City of York and County of the same city, and Custos Rotulorum of the North and West Ridings of the County of York, for the City of York and County of the same city, and Ainsty, otherwise Ainsty of York, and Vice Admiral of the County of York, City of York, and County of the same city.

Rob: I think that's absolutely terrific.

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