Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

3.3 - UK Special #1 - William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath

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3.3 - UK Special #1 - William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, William Pulteney.

Parliament: Hip hip! Hurrah! Hip hip! Hurrah! Hip hip! Hurrah!

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I'm here with my dad. We are reviewing all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer. That was fun to say. We have a new Prime Minister.

Joe: By "we," I assume you mean British people. We're Americans.

Abram: I know, but it's still fun. This is UK Special Episode 1: William Pulteney. It's special because he was only Prime Minister for two days and most people don't count him. But I do, so I asked my dad to talk about him.

Joe: He's pretty fun though. We haven't decided on James Waldegrave yet, the other disputed Prime Minister, but we'll figure it out when we get there.

Abram: Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at www.primefactorspodcast.com. If you like us, please like, subscribe, comment, or review since it helps other people find us.

Joe: Even though he was only Prime Minister for two days, Pulteney has several towns named for him. Today, we are recording in Bath, New Hampshire.

Abram: In a castle.

Joe: Well, we're recording in the visitor center of the castle. Of a castle.

Abram: We're not quite in the castle. We were in it a few minutes ago.

Joe: We were, and I think I may put something at the end of the episode that will talk a little bit more about the castle. We could have gone to Poultney, Vermont, but that's a longer drive, and this was already crazy. Two hours and 40 minutes to get here, plus traffic.

Abram: It's fine, we listened to podcasts in the car. We should finish Totalis Rankium's Franklin Roosevelt on the way home.

Joe: Yeah, actually that one's three episodes, so maybe we won't finish it. I want to also shout out and extend my thanks to the Prime Time Podcast. They have been reviewing Prime Ministers since last October, but I only just found out about them. They've been incredibly gracious and welcoming despite us marching on the same ground.

Joe: Their style is different. They have three hosts. They spend a lot of time talking about Parliament procedures and the mechanics of the UK system, and they have shorter biographies. Please check them out if you want more Prime Ministers in your life.

Abram: And hopefully they'll ask the same thing in one of their episodes about us.

Joe: I hope so. Maybe they'll mention us. That would be nice.

Abram: I hope they will. They sound good, but I like your town sections and Silver Spoons and Picture This.

Joe: All right. Speaking of which, are you ready, Abram?

Abram: I'm ready.

Picture This

Joe: We're in a dark wood-paneled room lit by oil lamps that cast flickering shadows on the wall. The air is thick with the smell of fresh ink and sweat, and the room hums with activity. Men and boys scurry around a complex machine of wood reinforced by iron screws. It groans and creaks as a pressman turns a heavy lever, driving ink-covered frames filled with type into damp paper sheets. Despite the freezing December night in Covent Garden, London, the room is stiflingly hot.

Joe: Two older men stand near the press, the scurrying workers giving them wide berths. They watch with keen interest as copies of the first page emerge from the press, still damp and glistening with ink.

Joe: The older of the two men, a distinguished figure in his sixties with sharp features and an air of authority, is Henry St. John, the Viscount Bolingbroke. He wears a finely tailored coat of dark blue velvet trimmed with gold, a symbol of his aristocratic roots. "The Craftsman by Caleb D'Anvers," he reads aloud, pride evident in his voice. "Our first issue!"

Joe: The other man, William Pulteney, takes the page from Bolingbroke's hands. He wears a simpler yet still elegant brown coat and breeches. "It's a good name. It sounds rustic and trustworthy, certainly more than if your or my name was on the cover!"

Joe: "Rustic? Pshaw! You're the one who insisted we take up half the first page quoting Cicero fighting corruption in Rome, in the original Latin no less. Not everyone shares your love of the classics."

Joe: The two men share an anachronistic high five at the mention of ancient Rome.

Joe: "This is how we'll strike back at that fiend Walpole. We'll bring the everyday men of London to our side, striking with our wits at censorship, unfair treaties, and the corruption that spreads through every level of our government."

Joe: "As long as they read past the first page and don't assume the whole thing is in Latin."

Joe: The two men bicker with pride as the men and boys around them clang out page after page. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but can the press be mightier than Robert Walpole?

Joe: All right, before we forget, I have one more thing that we need to do. Editor friend, can you please cue the sad music here? Thanks.

Joe: We're Americans. We mispronounce English words all the time. It's called English.

Abram: You would think it would be what the Americans speak, not what the people in England speak.

Joe: I don't know what a schedule is, nor aluminium. Don't even ask me what a biscuit is.

Abram: You know what a biscuit is.

Joe: They think biscuits are cookies, those crazy people. I feel bad when I mispronounce names. That's all I'm trying to say. I have it on good authority that Lord Carteret, as I've been calling him, should have been called Lord Carteret — so pronounced in English, not in French. And that he's not from France, he's from the Channel Islands, which are so much closer to France than England, but he still pronounces it Carteret.

Joe: And who I've been calling Stanhope is more properly pronounced Stanup.

Joe: We're still not sure about Thomas Pelham-Holles, whether it's Pelham Holes or Pelham Holles, as we've seen other smart people say it both ways. So maybe we'll figure that one out for next time. But I think that's enough sad music. Let's keep going.

Ancestry

Joe: Abram and I were talking about this. Some of our episodes are mostly biographies telling the story of one man, while others advance the story of the UK. But this is going to be that first kind. Pulteney, he was Prime Minister for like two days in the middle of Henry Pelham's term, and so he doesn't really expand the story of the UK much.

Joe: But I also have to admit that the story of Pulteney is a bit like telling Walpole's greatest hits again, except from the other side.

Abram: Which means everyone's greatest failure, basically.

Joe: Yeah, Pulteney, he's going to bring a fresh perspective on Walpole's term, and I've been so looking forward to talking about Pulteney.

Joe: So our story, it's going to start in Elizabeth's reign, somewhere around 1575. The Poulteney family, they were spelling it P-O-U-L-T-E-N-Y, although spelling in this period isn't fixed, so who knows. That family is up and coming. An ancestor of our William Poulteney managed to get a large leasehold in the St. James neighborhood of London, not far from Parliament, and this will become the Poulteney family estates as well as their major source of income.

Joe: By the time of our Pulteney, the estate's going to bring in millions of dollars a year in modern money. They were beholden to the crown for it because it was technically a lease, but it did remain in the family for generations.

Joe: The important thing for me is that the Pulteney family were city folk. Unlike any of our other Prime Ministers so far, they were all born in castles or out in the countryside. The Pulteney family lived and breathed London air, however nice the London air was in the 1600s.

Abram: I'm guessing it wasn't that nice. Didn't they, like, poop in the same place they got water from or something?

Joe: Yes, that happened.

Abram: That happened everywhere at that point, though.

Joe: I don't know. Well, fast forward to 1624, and William Pulteney's grandfather, whose name is William Pulteney, he's born. So one bad habit that they have is that they're going to name everybody William Pulteney. His grandfather's William Pulteney, his father's William Pulteney. He's William Pulteney, and his son is William Pulteney.

Joe: So to keep his grandfather separate from the others, we're gonna call him Sir William, although of course he's not a sir yet. He just was born. His great-grandfather, who was Michael Pulteney, so clearly they did know other names, they fought in the English Civil War as Royalists. So soon-to-be Sir William was a captain of a regiment of foot soldiers.

Abram: Are they soldiers that kicked people instead of used their swords?

Joe: Well, foot soldiers mean that they're fighting on the ground and not fighting on horseback. So as you know, the Royalists didn't do that well, and I don't know what battles that he fought in. During the Cromwell years, William kept his head down. He became a lawyer, and when Charles II came to power, Sir William was knighted for his support and made the commissioner of the militia for Middlesex.

Joe: From here, Sir William started climbing the ladder. There was a separate and influential family in Leicester called Pulteney, spelled P-U-L-T-E-N-Y. And supposedly Sir William changed his family spelling to match theirs to create a family link where none existed. That said, other biographies that I've read said that they really were related to the Leicester family, but that the spelling wasn't a final thing. So I don't know if this story is completely made up, but it's kind of cool if he was thinking, "I'll change the spelling of my name in order to sound more famous than I am."

Joe: So this isn't a biography of him, but for our story, two key things happen. Sir William had a son named William, whom we are going to call Colonel William or Colonel Pulteney to keep them separate. But of course, he's just a baby, he's not a colonel yet. Sir William met and became business partners with a guy called Henry Guy. Sir William also entered Parliament in 1679 for Westminster, further cementing the Pulteney family as the London elites.

Joe: Now, I don't know the details, but Sir William and Colonel William had a very difficult relationship. Colonel William, in addition to being a colonel at some point, was a businessman, but not a good one. Sir William on multiple occasions had to pay off his debts. Their relationship must have been bad because Sir William will explicitly remove his son from his inheritance, and that's practically unheard of in a period where the oldest son inherits is the law of the land.

Silver Spoons

Joe: Good news: on March 16th, 1684, William Pulteney is born. He was born the eldest son of Colonel Pulteney by his wife Mary Floyd. And this is as good a time as any for Silver Spoons.

Joe: So we've already mentioned Pulteney's father and grandfather. His great-grandfather served in the military but doesn't have his own Wikipedia page, so we don't count him. Unfair, I know, but it would only add half a point.

Joe: We didn't mention his uncle. He's a guy named John Pulteney. He was also a member of Parliament, and he had some cushy government jobs. For the early part of William's parliamentary career, John is going to be the famous Pulteney in Parliament, and he's going to be helping his nephew climb to power.

Joe: Strictly speaking, I don't know whether William's father is a colonel yet, or if he's going to achieve that in the Glorious Revolution or the Nine Years' War. Because we don't know whether he was a colonel or not, we're gonna give him the points.

Joe: So that gives William 4.5 silver spoons, our lowest score yet, even below Walpole's 5. But they had a lot in common. They were both wealthy, lower aristocratic families that were up and coming rather than, say, like the Spencer Comptons who were part of a multi-generational family dynasty.

Abram: I wonder if he'll become a Knight of Undies.

Joe: I don't think Pulteney ever gets knighted. No!

Young William Pulteney

Joe: So as I mentioned before, Colonel Pulteney, he was a poor businessman, and he seems to have spent his entire life annoying his father. His father bailed him out of debt at least twice. I haven't been able to find specifics on what happened, but it's likely that would have had an impact on William's life, as well as his younger brother Harry, who's going to be born in two years.

Joe: Sometime while William was very young, his grandfather disinherited his family. So instead of his dad getting the inheritance when his grandfather eventually died, it was going to be put in a trust that's controlled by Henry Guy — that's the business partner that I mentioned — as well as somebody named Sir Thomas Clarges.

Joe: Now, Henry Guy might not have been the best choice, as he's later going to be arrested for taking a bribe and sent to the Tower of London. That's going to happen in 1695. But maybe young William gets a glimpse of this and realizes corruption doesn't pay.

Joe: Sir William died in 1691 when William was just seven. His family was cut off, but not for long. So Henry Guy, he had no children, and then his sister died in 1692. So he made William his heir, effectively causing Sir William's fortune to skip a generation. So essentially his grandfather had money and he arranged for our William Pulteney to have money, but definitely not his dad.

Abram: Not the Colonel?

Joe: Yep, not Colonel Pulteney. William was educated at Westminster School in London. And when he was 15, Henry Guy tried to get him married.

Abram: That's young.

Joe: That is young.

Abram: Probably not for the time.

Joe: It was still young for the time because Guy tried to get him married to a daughter of the Earl of Marlborough. But the plan was dropped, probably because William was considered too young to marry, unless you were like a king or something. I guess they married pretty young.

Abram: One married at 14 in France.

Joe: Really? Which one?

Abram: Francis II.

Joe: Francis II. I don't even know when that is.

Abram: Around 1560.

Joe: Cool. So the next year, a nice round number, he made his way to Oxford, and he must have been a good student there. When Queen Anne and her court visited in 1702, the young William Pulteney was invited to give a speech. I don't know if this was because he was a super student or a good speaker or because he was rich. Maybe lots of kids gave speeches, I don't know. But his speech was excellent, and it was remarked that he was getting attention by people in the political sphere because he gave such an amazing speech as a young student.

Joe: Pulteney loved the classics and by all accounts was extremely intelligent and well-read. The little joke I made about Cicero at the beginning, that's true, but it's also telling that, you know, the classics-loving Pulteney is still going to want to quote Roman orators decades later.

Abram: Decades?

Joe: Well, let's see. So this is what, 1702? And he's going to end up doing The Craftsman in 1730, I think. So it's a while. Young William's relationship with Henry Guy also seems great. And I found some biographies that say that he was essentially his protégé. So after graduating, guess what he does?

Abram: What?

Joe: He goes on vacation. Yay! Not really. Remember, what did Spencer Compton do? What did Henry Pelham do? As soon as they leave college, they go on a Grand Tour. And we've seen all the rich kids at the time — they go off, they explore Europe for a year or two using their parents' money before coming back to England to, you know, make their living in adulthood.

Joe: He was in Hanover in 1705 when he got word that Henry Guy had put him up for one of the seats in Hedon.

Abram: Hadn't the Guy person already been arrested?

Joe: He was arrested, but at this point he was unarrested. I mean, he was in the Tower of London for however long, and then he got out, and then he got back into Parliament. But more importantly, Henry Guy was rich and he controlled some of those rotten boroughs, right, that we talked about, about Parliament, where people could just essentially buy who was going to be in Parliament. And Henry essentially used his wealth to get William a seat in Hedon that he controlled. So William Pulteney enters Parliament at 21 years old.

Friend of Walpole

Joe: His earliest parliamentary career was pretty uneventful. He was a young man. John Pulteney was much more famous. One biography that I read said it's hard to know what he did at the time because the parliamentary record just says "Mr. Pulteney," and they assumed that most of the time that was referring to John. But who knows?

Joe: Just a reminder, this is Queen Anne, so the Tories are still in charge, and neither Walpole nor Pulteney is gonna have that much influence quite yet. The War of Spanish Succession started, and this is going to quickly become personal for the young William.

Joe: His brother Harry Pulteney, remember he's two years younger, so he's in his late teens, he had joined the military just like his father, Colonel Pulteney. And in April 1707, there was a disastrous battle called the Battle of Almansa in Spain, and Harry Pulteney was captured. As best I can tell, he remained a prisoner of war for two years.

Joe: William might have taken this to heart because in 1709, he championed the cause of something called the Palatines, which is a group of Protestant refugees from the war that wanted to settle in England. See, refugee crises, right? I mean, they had them then, they have them now. They're always politically very difficult.

Joe: So this time is about when Pulteney met Robert Walpole. It might have been a match made in heaven. But before long, he and Walpole became great friends. They became great allies. Walpole invited him to the Kit-Cat Club.

Abram: Wait, why are they friends?

Joe: They love each other. They're two young, intelligent Whigs, and they wear wigs. They do wear wigs because you need to wear wigs sometimes back then. They actually got along very well.

Joe: See, I say here in my script, I know you're thinking, "Friends?" I knew that you would realize that. But yeah, Pulteney and Walpole were best friends at this point.

Joe: In February 1710, Henry Guy died, but good news, all of his fortune is going to William Pulteney. In fact, William Pulteney now has his grandfather's fortune as well as Henry Guy's fortune, so he's even richer than his family had been up to this point. Oh, the other guy that had been controlling that trust that we spoke about, he also died. So at this point, all this money, all of this property from both his family and Henry's family have all just landed on William Pulteney.

Joe: His father is still alive, but it's not clear how much involvement he had with his dad. I saw a note that he might have paid off one of his dad's debts, but for the most part it doesn't look like they were that close. There was talk that Pulteney was going to rename himself, that he was going to be either William Guy or William Pulteney-Guy, but he didn't end up doing that.

Abram: Pulteney-Guy.

Joe: I mean, it's possible that he realized that if he named himself Guy or Pulteney-Guy, that it was just opening himself up for some jokes.

Abram: And that if he married Lanin, you know where that would go too.

Joe: He would have a wife whose last name would be Guy.

Abram: So then they'd — Mrs. Guy.

Joe: Mrs. Guy. Yeah, that would be funny, actually.

Joe: In 1710, William participated in the Sacheverell trial. Remember that one? Gave a great speech. He voted for impeachment. We'll just keep moving on.

Joe: William at this point was also kind of keeping an eye on his brother. He wrote to the Duke of Marlborough — remember him? And he was the leader of the War of Spanish Succession for the British, and William argued for his brother to get a promotion, and guess what happened?

Abram: What?

Joe: He was rejected. And then he apologized to the Duke for stepping out of line the following month. So here he has another early lesson about using or misusing his parliamentary power.

Joe: The following year, Pulteney voted to keep the war going in the hope that there would be no possibility of uniting the Spanish and French crowns. And in general, he was against the settlement that would eventually come from that war.

Joe: By 1712, you might remember from Walpole's episode that his fate has soured. He was Secretary at War. He was accused of corruption and rewarding friends, all that stuff that Walpole probably did, but who knows for sure. And Pulteney defended him. He was his friend. And in fact, when the terms of the indictment were put out, Pulteney successfully argued to have the words, quote, "notorious corruption" removed from the charges. So he essentially made it slightly less bad.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Walpole was found guilty in the House of Commons and sent to the Tower of London. Remember that? Guess who visited?

Abram: Pulteney?

Joe: His friend, William Pulteney, visited him at the Tower of London. And in fact, Pulteney even did some writing for him. So remember that Walpole, while he was stuck in the Tower and then after, he was starting to write some pamphlets and things. We didn't talk about that too much because Walpole was already a long episode. And Pulteney helped. He wrote an attack on Oxford that Walpole used. As a writer, Pulteney is also going to be attacking censorship. So that's going to be something that comes up important later.

Joe: After the death of Queen Anne, George I comes to the throne with the Hanoverian succession, and he immediately favors the Whigs. Charles Townshend, he was Walpole's brother-in-law. He effectively runs the show, and he makes Pulteney into the Secretary at War. That's his highest role so far, and the same role that Walpole had had just a couple years before.

Joe: Along with his success in Parliament and his new job, Pulteney also found love. He married a woman named Anna Maria. She was the daughter of a plate glass manufacturer and a military contractor. They married in December 1714. Good news: she's very rich, and together they are very, very rich. He is a little old at this point, so he's already 30, and that's a little bit old to get married. And even more strange, they're not going to have any kids for 17 years.

Abram: That's old to have kids.

Joe: That is old. So I don't know why. I'm sure there's a good reason, but I honestly don't know why. Shortly after the wedding, his dad, Colonel Pulteney, he dies. One biography I read said that he, William Pulteney, maneuvered to not be responsible for any of his father's debts after his death.

Joe: The next years are good for Pulteney. He was on a secret committee that opposed the Treaty of Utrecht. He helped to get his father-in-law a job as a deputy commissioner so that he could sell weapons to the British army easier. He was even added to the Privy Council in 1716. His career is going great, and then something happens.

Joe: Now, in 1717, remember, Walpole resigned from the government, right? He was going against Sunderland and Stanhope.

Abram: You mean Stanup?

Joe: Stanup? Thank you.

Abram: He's not hoping for something. He's a turnip.

Joe: I know Townshend is a turnip. Remember, he's called Turnip Townshend.

Joe: So Walpole at this point was disagreeing with the foreign policy. He thought that George I was acting more like the King of Hanover than Britain, and —

Abram: Because he is more of the King of Hanover than Britain.

Joe: Well, I think he's an Elector of Hanover. I forget the exact title that Hanover had.

Joe: Guess what Pulteney did? He abandoned his posting and he resigned from the government to back his friend. So Pulteney, Walpole, and several others have now become the opposition Whigs fighting against Sunderland and Stanhope. Now, that said, you would think that resigning his role would win him some points with Walpole, but this is when things start to go bad.

Enemy with Walpole

Joe: So in 1718, Walpole sided with the Tories to try to reduce the size of the army. But Pulteney, he's from a military family. His father and brother had served in the army. So he wasn't happy. He actually spoke in the House against Walpole for the first time. Walpole was just trying to reduce the expenses of government and try to keep England out of war. But this is the first time that they disagreed.

Abram: I think I'm on Walpole's side here.

Joe: By 1721, remember, Walpole had managed to outmaneuver Sunderland and Stanhope. He took advantage of the South Sea Company crisis, and he was able — Walpole was essentially able to come back to power stronger than before. And in 1721, that's when we usually say that Walpole is now Prime Minister, right?

Joe: So when Walpole came back, he brought in many of his friends and gave them good roles, right? Townshend was going to be Secretary of State for the Northern Department. Carteret would be the Secretary of State for the Southern Department. Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, would be Lord Chamberlain. Lots of other names we haven't talked about.

Joe: But there's a name missing from the people that Walpole was helping in 1721. William Pulteney was not brought back as Secretary at War. Walpole had deliberately left him out of the new government.

Joe: Sources differ on why. Some people say that Walpole was angry at him for going against him on that bill. Some say that Walpole was nervous about Pulteney because maybe he's going to become too powerful, that he's too good of a speaker, and if he's kept around, then maybe he'll outshine Walpole.

Joe: Some other sources say that no, Walpole was being very nice to Pulteney. He offered him a peerage, like, "Here's a title, go to the House of Lords." But as you know, oftentimes when Walpole sent people to the House of Lords, it was to keep them out of his hair because Walpole wanted to be responsible for the Commons and not the Lords. And promotions were good, but it meant that you couldn't bother him anymore.

Joe: So Walpole famously said that every man has his price, and he didn't seem to know Pulteney's. And after years and years of being friends, now they're enemies.

Joe: Pulteney wasted almost no time to become Walpole's biggest enemy. He learned from his time working with Walpole as a member of the opposition Whigs. He knew how to work against a ruling faction.

Joe: By as early as July 1721, Pulteney accused Walpole in the Commons of being a liar. Essentially, they had taken different positions while governing than he argued when he was in the opposition.

Joe: A few months later, in February 1722, he attacked Walpole by saying that his investments in the Bank of England were causing him to make bad choices for the country that could only enrich Walpole. Walpole, he said, was increasing his personal fortune by, quote, "indirect means and corruption." Those are fighting words.

Joe: So those were just two examples, but there was a lot of stuff going on between Walpole and Pulteney, and Pulteney was just consistently pushing back against Walpole in ways that he felt that he might not have been completely above board.

Joe: Now, in the election of 1722, Pulteney worked to increase his own influence. He was able to get his father-in-law a seat for Steyning, his brother in Hedon, and his cousin, a guy by the name of Daniel Pulteney, who'll come up again. He's gonna be in Preston. And at the same time, George I made Pulteney's estates in London into a freehold.

Abram: What's a freehold?

Joe: Well, basically, up to this point, Pulteney and his family have controlled that territory in London as a lease. And George I says, "Oh, no worries, guys, you can have it. It's yours now." So in other words, he's even richer than he was.

Joe: And finally, in May 1723, Walpole gave him a job. It wasn't a big job, but it was something called Cofferer of the Household. So essentially he worked under George I.

Abram: He works to be the one to cough whenever someone coughs.

Joe: Cofferer of the Household means that he essentially was responsible for paying the servants in King George I's household. So it was a job that involved money and gave him sort of a perspective to see what the king was spending on, at least in some areas.

Henry St. John, the Viscount Bolingbroke

Joe: We're going to pause from William Pulteney for a second because I want to talk about somebody else, a good friend of yours, Henry St. John, the Viscount Bolingbroke. Now, you've been asking about him for a while. You really liked him in the Walpole episode, right?

Abram: He's the classic villain.

Joe: He was, he was, but to Pulteney, I don't think he's a villain. So since he's going to be important to Pulteney's story, let me catch you up.

Joe: So Henry St. John, he was a Tory Secretary of State for Queen Anne, and he served as the Secretary of State for both the Southern Department and the Northern Department at different times. He was the Secretary at War, and he was very important to Anne, an important member of the Tory governments of the 1710s.

Joe: Despite being a confidant of Queen Anne, Bolingbroke kind of had Jacobite sympathies. He was in contact with the Pretender's government. He even made an attempt to bring more Jacobites into government roles until Queen Anne died and everything went a little bit sideways. And because George I was a fan of the Whigs, he really lost power quickly after George took the throne.

Joe: Fearing for his life, Bolingbroke fled to Paris in disguise. Remember, he was watching a play, and then he snuck out of the play in the middle and then fled to Paris. And then in Paris, he joined up with the Pretender, and he was made the Earl of Bolingbroke in the Pretender peerage, which basically means that if the Jacobites won, he would be made an Earl, and if the Jacobites didn't win, well, he's just regular Henry St. John. And as you know, they didn't win.

Joe: So Parliament passed a bill called a Bill of Attainder, and that basically declared Bolingbroke a rebel. All of his lands and property in England were seized. He lost his titles, and he sort of lived in kind of an exiled retirement in Orleans. He met with dignitaries. He met the philosopher Voltaire. He even got married after his wife died.

Joe: He did show regret for his actions, and somehow he managed to convince the king that he was reformed and ready to come home. So in 1723, George I granted Bolingbroke a pardon, and he was allowed to return to England.

Joe: The only thing he wasn't allowed to do, because Robert Walpole convinced George I not to let him do it, is that he didn't get a writ of summons, which means that he wasn't allowed to return to the House of Lords.

Joe: So Bolingbroke is back in England, and pretty soon he's going to make friends with a certain member of the opposition Whigs. I wonder who that could be.

A Little Light Corruption

Joe: Meanwhile, the situation with Walpole is getting worse. This is the point of Walpole's story where he forced Carteret to become Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, allowing Walpole to appoint another Secretary of State. Pulteney wanted this job, but Walpole still hated him. So who did he give the job to? Give you a hint, he has three names and a peerage. Thomas —

Abram: Pelham —

Joe: Holles. So Thomas Pelham-Holles became one of the two Secretaries of State. Supposedly, this was because Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, controlled more seats, but really, it was likely because Walpole and Pulteney did not get along.

Joe: Now, there's so many stories about Pulteney going against Walpole at every turn, trying to fight corruption or fight just any bill that Walpole wanted to pass. So if I told you about all of them, this episode would be even longer than I'm sure it already is. But I am going to tell you one because it involves a woman called the Mad Duchess.

Joe: So this woman, her name originally was Elizabeth Cavendish. She married the Duke of Albemarle. And she moved with her husband to Jamaica, where he was made the Lieutenant Governor of the Jamaica colony. They made a fortune there, but he caught one of those tropical diseases and died. She was now a very rich widow, but the strain may have caused a mental break, and she soon got that nickname as the Mad Duchess.

Joe: Even though she was having mental challenges, she was rich, so the Duke of Montagu wanted to marry her. And this is kind of weird, so either to appease her, or maybe he was just a little bit strange himself, he dressed up as the Emperor of China in order to woo her. One other source said that they actually both dressed up as the Emperor and Empress of China when they got married. I don't know which of those is true. Maybe either of them is true.

Abram: Which Emperor of China? Which dynasty?

Joe: I don't know what emperor was ruling in the 1720s.

Abram: 1720s. Thinking, thinking. If it was the Qing dynasty, it would have most likely been the one in between, like, the two ones that ruled for, like, 60 years that were, like, very popular and did well. The one between them.

Joe: So by our point in 1725, she was effectively being taken care of and somebody else was managing her money for her. But that person, who happened to be a friend of Walpole's, might have been stealing from her and mismanaging her money. I don't know all the details here. I assume this was because she was a very rich Duchess and that they wanted somebody that would control her money. I don't know.

Joe: But the point is that she had a bit of a caretaker and the caretaker was embezzling from her. So Oxford, of all people, apparently asked for this to be investigated, and Walpole agreed kind of to investigate. Here Walpole and Pulteney got into a disagreement. Walpole wanted a tiny investigation. Pulteney wanted a gigantic investigation.

Abram: In fact, was a tiny investigation like a small investigation, but they wouldn't like do anything like arresting people or anything big like that?

Joe: Maybe. Remember, Walpole had been known as the Screener-in-Chief. I think that's the right term they used. That meant that he was very good at shielding his friends from culpability when they did something wrong, and this seems to be one of those cases.

Joe: So Pulteney wanted a big investigation and Walpole wanted a little investigation, and you know who won?

Abram: Walpole.

Joe: And they had a tiny investigation and the guy got a little slap on the wrist, and Pulteney just failed to prevent this corruption.

Joe: Later that year, Pulteney kind of did something that was maybe a little bit more daring, possibly a little bit more stupid. So do you remember what the Civil List is? The Civil List is the money that gets given to a king to pay for all the household expenses, and that they had given him a certain amount of money. Well, the king spent too much, so Robert Walpole's like, "No problem, we'll just fund the rest, you don't need to be in debt."

Joe: And Pulteney said, "No, we gave you a certain amount of money in 1721 and you spent more than it, you know, that's hardly our responsibility."

Joe: In fact, he said, quote, "Graciously pleased to give directions that the proper officer or officers of the Exchequer, Excise, Customs, and Post Office do lay before the House an account of all monies —"

Abram: Wait, is it Mr. Fancy Pants?

Joe: He is fancy. Yay! "— which have been issued and paid out of said offices to any person or persons on account for the Privy Purse, Secret Service, pensions, bounties, or any sum of money to any person or persons whatsoever from March 25th, 1721 to March 25th, 1725."

Joe: So what Pulteney was saying is, "Sure, we'll give you more money, but I want you to tell us everything you spent any money on whatsoever for the past four years." Well, guess what the king thought of that? What do you think? He'd like it?

Abram: No.

Joe: Guess what Walpole thought of that?

Abram: No.

Joe: No. Guess what happened? Remember that job he had of the Cofferer of the Household?

Abram: That job.

Joe: That job. Well, he's been fired.

The Craftsman

Joe: Unfortunately, Pulteney is now out of a job and a little bored. Without a job, he needed to find a different way to fight corruption. I mean, he was still in Parliament, mind you, but the way he was doing it in Parliament clearly wasn't working.

Joe: So this is when Bolingbroke — now Bolingbroke, when he came back, he had lots of dinner parties. He basically just tried to be friends with everybody. And in December 1726, Pulteney, who had talked to him at one of these parties, agreed to work with Bolingbroke and his cousin Daniel Pulteney to make their own newspaper.

Joe: The newspaper would be called The Craftsman, and it would be an opposition newspaper that would go against everything that Walpole was pushing for — the Civil List, the excise tax, how much money the Prince of Wales was spending, anything that was on their mind, they could write about it in this newspaper.

Joe: Pulteney wrote in it, Bolingbroke did, Daniel did, but also other important people. So Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver's Travels — we talked about him once — he wrote some articles for this paper. A guy named Alexander Pope, he was a famous writer and poet of this era. And they made this newspaper, and the opening, the first page of this newspaper, just like I said in the introduction, was Latin, a speech by Cicero.

Joe: Now I'm going to read you a little bit of this speech because it sort of underlines what Pulteney thought he was doing. He was comparing himself to the great orator Cicero saying, "Verres" — that's a corrupt person who was around in the Roman Empire — "Verres had been brought to trial, a man condemned by everyone's opinion, by the magnitude of his wealth, and by his own hope and boasting. I have taken on this case, judges, with the greatest willingness and expectation of the Roman people, not to increase the hatred of our order, but to relieve the common disgrace."

Joe: "I have brought before you a man by whose condemnation the lost reputation of the courts can be restored. You can reconcile yourselves with the Roman people and satisfy foreign nations. A plunderer of the treasury, a tormentor of Asia and Pamphylia, a robber of urban law, a stain and destruction to the province of Sicily, concerning whom, if you judge sternly and religiously, the authority which ought to remain yours will be preserved."

Joe: "But if the immense wealth of the man shatters the sanctity and truthfulness of this court, I will still achieve this. The judgment will seem to have been in the interest of the state rather than the accused, or that the accuser was wanting in duty towards the accused."

Joe: Super fancy. But let me tell you what he was saying.

Abram: Fancy is awful.

Joe: It's true, but he said it in Latin. I'm giving you the English version. Oh, so Latin means ten times more fancy than it is.

Joe: So essentially there's a rich man named Verres who Pulteney is comparing to Robert Walpole, and Verres was essentially on trial, but because he was so rich, he couldn't get a fair trial. Do you think that happens today?

Abram: Um, maybe.

Joe: Yes, yes, it does. Unfortunately, our political system sometimes bends towards the people that have the most money.

Joe: Essentially, Pulteney is going to be writing this newspaper. He really sees himself as like the next Cicero, and that he's fighting against all this corruption in the British state. He said, quote, "This administration has done more to introduce corruption than ever was done before."

Joe: So this rebellion of sorts, this pushback that he's doing against Robert Walpole, is going to coalesce into something called the Patriot Whigs, which is going to be the faction that is led by Pulteney and later by Lord Carteret.

Joe: He was also so anti-corruption that in 1729, he made an important promise, probably a bad one. He promised that he would refuse any more government jobs so that he couldn't be accused of being corrupt.

Joe: A year later, Walpole finally wanted to make peace with him. He offered him a peerage. He offered to let him replace Townshend when he left, and Pulteney said, "No, I'm not going to take a job in your government. I'm going to be fighting you from the outside."

Joe: Of course, George I died. When did George I die?

Abram: 1727.

Joe: And he was replaced by George II, but Pulteney wasn't involved in any of that.

The Welsh Opera

Joe: One of the things that was happening in this time was that people liked to make fun of Walpole, and the people liked to make fun of the people in Parliament. And remember that Walpole hated that so much he actually passed a law that would censor plays, and that stayed on the books until the 20th century.

Joe: But Walpole's rivalry with Pulteney was becoming so famous that it was even featured in a play. Can we act out a bit of it together?

Abram: Yeah. All right, this is gonna be funny.

Joe: The play is called The Welsh Opera, and it was first performed April 22nd, 1731. They wrote a longer version, but that was never performed because of the censorship laws and other stuff that came next.

Joe: So you're gonna play a character called Robin the Butler, and he's based on Robert Walpole. And I'm gonna play William the Coachman, based off of William Pulteney. So they're both employees of a rich household and William is accusing the other of being a thief, but it just becomes name-calling. So I will play William. Ready?

William: You lie, sirrah, you lie.

Robin: Who do you call liar, you blockhead? I say you lie.

William: And I say you lie.

Robin: The devil take the greater liar, I say.

William: 'Twas he that lies did first devise. The first words were his, but the last shall be mine.

Robin: You kiss my dog.

William: You are a sly dog.

Robin: Bufflehead.

William: Loggerhead.

Robin: Blockhead.

William: Fool.

Robin: Swine.

William: Fox. Sirrah, I'll make you repent you ever quarreled with me. I will tell my master of the two silver spoons you stole. I'll discover your tricks. You're selling glasses and pretending that the frost broke them, making your master brew more beer than he needed, and then giving it away to your family, especially to feed that great swollen belly of that pot-gutted brother of yours, who gets drunk twice a day at the master's expense.

Robin: Ha, ha, ha! And is this all?

William: No, sirrah, it's not all. Then there's your filing the plate, and when it was found lighter, pretending that it was wasted in cleaning, and your bills for Tutty and rotten stone when you used nothing but poor Whiting. Sirrah, you have been such a rogue that you have stole above half my master's plate, and you spoiled the rest.

Abram: That was funny.

Joe: That is fun. So the thing I love about this is that it's showing everyone is aware that Walpole and Pulteney are just constantly sniping at each other. They're just enemies and they used to be friends.

Abram: Yeah, they did.

Two Duels

Joe: Well, aside from that play, the situation with Pulteney was becoming even more heated. Like, The Craftsman was hated by Walpole and his government. They looked for ways to close it down. But although The Craftsman kind of started high-minded, they gradually did more personal attacks.

Joe: In late 1730, Pulteney was insulted in a pamphlet probably written by one of Walpole's supporters called John Hervey. And in response, he wrote an insulting attack against Hervey in the pages of The Craftsman. So specifically, he said that Hervey was probably gay or that he liked both men and women. Now these days that wouldn't be as big of a deal, but back then this was a big insult and something that you didn't announce publicly even if it was true.

Joe: So Hervey challenged Pulteney to a duel. This is going to be a duel with swords, not with guns. I didn't know they did duels with swords back then.

Abram: You really couldn't duel with guns back then, so I guess they did it with swords.

Joe: In January 1731, the two men met somewhere in London. I don't know where. They drew their swords. They each had a helper to make sure that the duel was fair, and they attacked each other. Pulteney got a cut on his hand. Unfortunately, Hervey was stabbed several times and had to be taken away. Pulteney won the duel because the other person died — and the other guy, he's eventually going to recover.

Joe: But this is kind of like the first time in the story where I really am not feeling very happy about Pulteney.

Joe: It was only a couple of months after that where Pulteney almost got into a duel with Henry Pelham. Do you remember from Pelham's episode?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Like, they were fighting over funding in the army, and they almost got into a fight there.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Pulteney's insults in The Craftsman just kept getting worse and worse. And one of the insults that he made to Walpole, I'm gonna read, it said, quote, "You may go on misapplying the public treasure and prostituting your royal master's name in your own dirty service, but you shall know, sir, that you have men to deal with. And whilst there is a hand able to write or a press open in the kingdom, your infamous scurrility shall not go unanswered."

Joe: He was basically saying that Walpole was abusing the king, but he's also saying things about Walpole wanting to close the press. But George II was so unhappy about this that he kicked Pulteney out of the Privy Council.

Joe: The only good news that happened about this time is that Pulteney's first son is finally born. And this could be maybe why he seemed a little bit extra stressed lately, but his first son is born. Guess what they named him?

Abram: William.

Joe: William Pulteney. And we are going to call him Viscount Pulteney because eventually he's going to become a Viscount. So notice he was also 48 when he had his first kid.

Abram: Whoa.

Joe: And so that's a little bit old.

Abram: How many kids will he have?

Joe: One.

Joe: So remember the excise crisis with Walpole? That's when Walpole wanted to change all the taxes and charge more. Pulteney was successfully able to block that bill. Walpole's government almost fell over that, but that really just upset Walpole even more.

Joe: Because Walpole was so upset, Pulteney recommended to Bolingbroke that he flee back to France. They were very afraid that somebody was going to arrest him or that something would happen, and so Bolingbroke went back to France. And after Bolingbroke goes back to France, The Craftsman becomes — I mean, it's still going to be around for a while, but you can see that the wind is getting out of its sails a little bit.

Joe: But Pulteney is going to spend pretty much all of 1736 in a funk. Some of the commentators just say he's ill and he stops attending the Commons, but he just kind of withdraws into himself. He doesn't go out much. One biography I read said that, you know, he was just tired of being the opposition. He had been the bad guy for like 15 years, and what had he accomplished? And now that his friend had gone back to France, like, it was just a tough time for him. This is 1736.

Abram: Okay, so Walpole's time is almost up, but not quite yet.

Joe: Yeah, because Walpole at this point is going to enter that war that he doesn't want to enter, of Jenkins' Ear, and Pulteney is one of the people that sort of pushes it on him. And then when Walpole does bad, Pulteney is going to be the first person to sort of try to charge Walpole with a crime because he's not prosecuting the war very well.

Abram: Does Bolingbroke ever come back?

Joe: Bolingbroke's pretty much in France now. I think he's going to retire. He's old, right? Keep in mind that he's older than Pulteney.

Abram: And Pulteney is like 50, so he's probably like 58.

Joe: Well, I think he was 60 when they started The Craftsman.

Abram: And when did they start, like 1726?

Joe: He's somewhere up there.

Joe: In 1741, Pulteney's faction gained a ton of seats. Walpole was weakened, and remember, they had sort of a no-confidence vote over the Chippenham seat. And finally, Walpole was effectively defeated. Pulteney had finally accomplished what he had always wanted, and Walpole effectively stopped being Prime Minister.

Almost Prime Minister

Joe: And with Walpole's loss, you might think that Pulteney would be the one to replace him. Because it was Pulteney's faction.

Abram: I don't think most people will think that. They've already listened to most of our episodes.

Joe: That's true. But if they hadn't listened to our episode about Spencer Compton, then maybe they wouldn't know, because it was Pulteney's opposition Whigs that essentially pushed Walpole out. But George II even offered him the job. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but George II would have had Pulteney as the Prime Minister.

Joe: But remember that he made that promise. And Pulteney said that he wasn't going to take any more government jobs. He wanted to fight the system. He didn't want to be a part of the system. So he turns down the job. Spencer Compton gets it. Carteret is going to become the Secretary of State. He gets to mingle with George II down in Hanover. But Pulteney would at least get a cabinet job, what they called a cabinet role without an office. Essentially, he's allowed to be part of the government, but he doesn't have to take an official job.

Joe: He said this, quote: "When I declined accepting, though extremely pressed by all my friends, of any employment whatsoever on the late change of affairs in England, I had taken a pretty firm resolution never to concern myself with public affairs anymore. I'd been long tired with tedious and disagreeable opposition and was resolved, whether I could get fairly and honorably out of it, never to engage on either side anymore. That is, I was resolved to have as little to do with the courts as possibly I could, and I was determined to have nothing to do against them."

Joe: I'm going to pause here because January 21st, 1742, George Grenville makes his first speech in Parliament.

Abram: George Grenville? Is it the tax guy?

Joe: I don't know. I haven't researched him.

Abram: So anyways, put a pin in George Grenville.

Joe: So George Grenville made a speech arguing that they should investigate Walpole's actions during the war. So you put a pin in him.

Joe: On July 17th, 1742, Pulteney got a promotion. He is now the Earl of Bath.

Abram: He's the Earl of Taking a Bath.

Joe: He's the Earl of Taking a Bath. And he's no longer in the House of Commons. He's now in the House of Lords. People are going to just start calling him Bath.

Abram: Can't call him by his name because he's in the Bath.

Joe: He has a son. His son is 11 years old. And so because of the way this peerage system works, and I don't understand all of it, his son gets a courtesy title that is a level below the title of his dad. And so he is now a Viscount. So Viscount Pulteney is now his son. He's 11 and he has that job officially.

Abram: He's too young to be a Viscount, I'd say.

Joe: Yeah, but he doesn't get — like, it's not a full Viscount, so he can't actually go into the House of Lords or anything. It's just, "You're going to be an Earl someday, so we'll call you something nice for now."

Joe: Yeah, so although Pulteney, calling himself Bath because he's in the Bath, he found himself out of power. In fact, Walpole met him in the hall at the House of Lords one day and said, quote, "Here we are, my lord, the two most insignificant fellows in England."

Joe: Walpole lost all of his power, and quite frankly, Pulteney, because he's in the House of Lords, lost a lot of his. But it's nice that maybe at the end, maybe they could be a little bit friends again. I like to think so.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: So Compton, as we saw, he wasn't Prime Minister for long. When did he die?

Abram: '43, I think.

Joe: 1743, yes. That led to a separate power struggle between Pulteney and Carteret versus the Pelham brothers. And as we saw in Henry Pelham's episode, Pelham is gonna get to be Prime Minister.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: But this is the first time that William Pulteney, the Earl of Bath, is actively going after the Prime Minister job that he turned down the first time. Basically, that role becomes a continuation. Carteret stays in power as a Secretary of State.

The Short-Lived Ministry

Joe: Now, if you remember from Henry Pelham's episode, the Pelham brothers are going to do a power play where they try to force King George II to bring in William Pitt, but he refuses. And so they force the issue by resigning and asking almost all the other Whigs in government to resign as well. Do you remember that?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: So when they resign, on February 10th, 1746, King George II makes William Pulteney into the First Lord of the Treasury to replace the outgoing Henry Pelham. He has a mandate to immediately try to fix the situation. Everybody is resigning. Do something about this.

Joe: So Pulteney immediately tapped his friend Lord Carteret, who is now technically the Earl Granville. He got both Secretary of State jobs at the same time. That's the first time that somebody had the Secretary of State for both since Queen Elizabeth.

Joe: He started filling other jobs, right? He had to go super fast, find somebody, fill a government as fast as possible. The Earl of Carlisle was made Lord Privy Seal. The Earl of Winchilsea was made First Lord of the Admiralty. But although some of them accepted, many more Whigs refused to have anything to do with his government. They could not fill all of the seats no matter how hard they tried.

Joe: Even worse, the City of London said that without Pelham in charge, they weren't going to give the king a loan that he needed in order to pay some of the military debts from all the recent wars.

Joe: It happened so fast, but it also ended very fast, before Pulteney could get everything set up. And it might have been impossible to set everything up, to be honest, with so many people sort of resigning. George II gave up. He handed the power back to Henry Pelham on February 12th. So Pulteney was Prime Minister for just two days. In fact, so short that many people don't think he was Prime Minister at all.

Abram: But we do, so that's why we're counting him.

Joe: So there was a good joke that was written about his administration. Let me tell you, quote, "The most wise and honest of all administrations. The minister having never transacted one rash thing, and what is more marvelous, he left as much money in the treasury as he found in it."

Joe: Right, because he didn't have time to do anything, so he didn't spend any money.

After His Administration

Joe: This was honestly the end of both Pulteney and Carteret's political careers. Both of them are going to end up retiring. Neither of them are going to have much significance after this at all. We'll cover most of what happens next in Thomas Pelham-Holles's episode, and maybe Cavendish's episode.

Joe: But let me give you a couple points of what else happened to Pulteney before he died. Remember that he has a kid now. His kid was 11, but he's a little bit older now. And the kid turns into a real troublemaker.

Joe: So, at 16, he and his parents got into a huge fight. In fact, his parents thought he had gotten married to somebody without permission, right? And for a rich family who marries primarily for connections and money, that would have been a huge deal.

Joe: So the younger William wrote, quote, "Papa, Mama, and I have quarreled about a report of my being married to Miss Villiers and some other scrapes, and they won't see me. I just wrote a long letter to Papa. And one part of it is full of submission, but in the other I threaten him. So how he'll take it, God knows. I long to get out of this country."

Joe: I don't know why they thought he got married, but clearly he is a kid that is somewhat difficult to deal with.

Joe: By December 1747, he wasn't even allowed to go out by himself because, and I'll quote again, "Lady Bath is very strict on him and never lets him go out by himself. She is afraid that her son should be debauched, but I am sure that he is wicked enough and wants no instructions."

Joe: She won't let him go outside because she thinks that he'll hang out with criminals or with bad people. But the person is saying he doesn't need to hang out with them. He's bad enough already.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Two years later, the family had either patched things up, or William and his wife really wanted to keep tabs on their son, because they end up spending an entire summer together in Paris, which is nice. I would love to go to Paris for a holiday. Whole summer.

Abram: Me too.

Joe: By 1752, Pulteney gives up on The Craftsman and finally shuts down his newspaper. His time in politics is over, except for the support of his son, because two years later he buys his son a seat in Parliament.

Joe: And one of the biographies that I read said that he did this because he hoped that Henry Pelham would help become a mentor to the younger William Pulteney and maybe get him on the right track and not be such a difficult child. But Henry did die pretty much immediately after, so they didn't have a chance to have much of a relationship.

Joe: In 1759 — so at this point the Seven Years' War has started. So the Seven Years' War started in 1756, but three years later, Pulteney, the elder one, is now 75, and he decides that he has to help the war effort by assembling a group of foot soldiers.

Joe: Do you remember how Henry Pelham, he assembled a regiment of dragoons —

Abram: You mean dragons —

Joe: — to fight in 1715? And so William Pulteney in 1759 is doing the same, except he's now too old to lead a group of soldiers. So he taps his son, who is going to become a Lieutenant Colonel of the 85th King's Light Infantry.

Joe: That story might not have a happy ending. But I'm going to pause there for a second because we finally made it to 1761. Who is king in 1761?

Abram: Guess what his name is. If you guessed right, your answer must be George.

Joe: It is George, yes.

Abram: Why do they only have Georges? Trust me, there's more than just these three. So we're halfway through the Georges.

Bath, New Hampshire

Joe: In 1761, Bath, New Hampshire is chartered. So we're about 150 miles north-northwest of Boston. We're deep in the woods. It's very mountainous here. There's some beautiful mountains.

Abram: And there used to be an old man in them.

Joe: And there used to be the Old Man of the Mountain, but that collapsed. When did that collapse?

Abram: 2003.

Joe: 2003. That's a famous natural rock formation that looked like a face, but it doesn't look like a face anymore.

Abram: It looks like if you made a face, like, but filled in the part, like, in front of your chin now and made your face not stick out anymore.

Joe: Okay, so this was empty country in 1761 except for some Native Americans, probably from the Abenaki tribes, but I wasn't able to determine that for sure. Based on what I've read, maybe 20 to 40 Native Americans lived in what is now the town of Bath.

Joe: The town was chartered by Benning Wentworth. He was the colonial governor of New Hampshire, and we talked about him in Pelham's episode because he also chartered Pelham, New Hampshire, remember? He also chartered Poulteney, Vermont at the same time as Bath. So clearly this was all related to our friend William Pulteney.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: There's also Baths in Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, but those are all named for the town of Bath, not for the Earl of Bath, as was Bath County, Virginia. But Bath and Pulteney, New York are strange cases. So they're going to be founded by a descendant, or a distant cousin actually, of Pulteney, and they will be named probably for him, but it's kind of uncertain.

Joe: So this town where we are now, Bath, New Hampshire, was chartered for a preacher named the Reverend Andrew Gardner. They were planning to move 61 members of his congregation to the town, but at this point Gardner was already old. He was 68, and he built the first farm in 1765.

Joe: So that's one of the weird differences with New Hampshire compared to Massachusetts. Like, people in Massachusetts usually move somewhere first and then they decided it was a town, but in New Hampshire they just basically placed towns on a map where nobody lived and then people would be invited to move there.

Joe: By 1767, there were 22 families in town, but I'm not really sure how many of them were Gardner's and how many weren't. And in fact, in 1769, the members of the town basically went to the governor and said, "Revise the charter," and they removed Gardner from it entirely. So my guess is that whatever he was trying to do with his congregation wasn't very successful.

Joe: In this period of the 1700s, this is frontier, right? When we think of the American frontier, we're usually thinking out west, but there were cowboys.

Abram: Yeehaw!

Joe: Yeah, well, this was very much off the beaten path. I mean, it's not that many people here even now, but it was frontier then.

Abram: 1,077 here now.

Joe: Oh, thank you for telling me. So when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the military members that were here all had to go and fight in the war, and there was some concern that the Native Americans that were living up here would take advantage of the situation and attack some of the settlements.

Joe: Many of the residents of Bath, they left. So during the Revolutionary War, they moved south because they were fearful of attack. Some others stayed, but they ended up building a fort just to the east of here where families could live until the end of the war to be safe from attack.

Joe: As it turns out, there was no attack. The Native Americans didn't take advantage of the Revolution in order to attack, at least in this area, and honestly not at all that I'm aware of. But that's what people were worried about.

Abram: Somewhere they did, maybe it was just a minor attack.

Joe: But after the war, Bath became a popular place for Revolutionary War soldiers. And nearly 500 people had moved here by the 1790s, most of which were Revolutionary War veterans. It's not changed all that much since then, actually.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: From the 1790s to today, it's only doubled in size. This is still very much a small town in the woods. There —

Abram: All the other towns we've covered, except maybe Pelham, Massachusetts, all of the others are like a lot bigger.

Joe: Pelham, Massachusetts, it's only a little bigger than this.

Abram: I think it's 1,200 people.

Joe: But keep in mind that they flooded part of that town.

Abram: So it was probably like closer to 2,000. It would be closer to 2,000 if they hadn't done that.

Joe: So this town tries to be a tourist town. There's cabins you can rent, there's mini golf, there's three famous covered bridges built in the 19th century.

Abram: There's a castle that we happen to be right next to.

Joe: Oh yes, and that is the exciting place we're recording today, from Tarleton Castle, or rather the under-construction visitor center. And this is amazing. It is the life quest of an artist and a group of artists here to build a castle in the New Hampshire woods that will be used by artists of all stripes in order to come here and do their art. All different kinds of artists, which means stripes because it's art.

Joe: But honestly, how cool is it that we get to record at a castle? We're not even in England and we get to record at a castle.

Abram: We're in like grounds that are part of the castle property, but we're not in the castle itself.

Joe: Okay, that's true. The castle, we did see the castle and I might —

Abram: We were in the castle and we talked to like the owner person who's setting it up.

Joe: But yes, we do. And he gave us some great info and I might include that at the end of this episode.

The End

Joe: So back to William Pulteney. The end of our story is a little sad. Pulteney's wife died in 1758. So it's just him and his son, but his son was fighting in the Seven Years' War.

Joe: In 1763, his son was returning to England from the Seven Years' War and caught a fever and died in Madrid. So, he didn't die of an injury. He wasn't shot. But wherever he was, he had picked up a disease, and the disease killed him. And it's really sad because William Pulteney, our William Pulteney, had arranged a good life for him. His son was gonna be a Lord of the Bedchamber for the new Prince of Wales.

Abram: Was he ever that?

Joe: I think he was made that, but he was too busy fighting to actually do the job.

Abram: Because he made it like shortly before he died, but he never got to do it.

Joe: Yep. But like father, like son, William Pulteney refused to pay his son's debts after he died.

Joe: But on July 7th, 1764, William Pulteney, our William Pulteney, died. He was 80 years old. He had a ton of money, all of which passed to his brother Harry. But Harry is going to die in 1767, and then they're going to give his money to a cousin through Francis Pulteney.

Joe: So Chesterfield said of Pulteney, quote, "He was a most complete orator and debater in the House of Commons, eloquent, entertaining, persuasive, strong, and patriotic as the occasion required. For he had arguments, wit, and tears at his command."

Joe: And that is the end of William Pulteney.

Rating

Abram: Rating! Okay, accomplishments.

Joe: What do you think his accomplishments were, Abram?

Abram: He managed to stop Walpole on some things. But like only maybe like 40% of them or maybe a bit less. So we can't give him much for that. He did try, but he wasn't successful in most of them. And he was able to make a — from what you said, like, you know, extremely successful newspaper, but pretty successful. And he like stopped Walpole once again. This is out of 20. So I'm giving him a 7 out of 20.

Joe: Yeah. So I'm thinking that he didn't really accomplish anything as a Prime Minister himself.

Abram: Yeah, but this is, remember, his whole life.

Joe: That's true, but he really wasn't able to solidify his own term.

Abram: Actually, I'm changing mine to a 6. You're right, he didn't accomplish anything as Prime Minister, but I am still keeping it okay-high because he was able to make a pretty successful newspaper and stop Walpole on some of his stuff.

Joe: I think that if it wasn't for Pulteney, Walpole would have been worse. And as a result, I think I'm right with you. I don't think he accomplished all that much. He mostly kept other people from accomplishing bad things. The most I can go is 6. Yeah, I agree with that.

Joe: Now, disaccomplishments.

Abram: Anything that he undid? No.

Joe: I don't think he has any disaccomplishments.

Abram: Let me think. Yeah, none.

Joe: So Abram's scoring him 0 for disaccomplishments. I'm also going to score him 0.

Abram: And bad personality. He fought a duel after accusing someone of being gay. That's bad. And this I think was mostly the — his wife, but I assume he was involved in the thing with his kid, remember? Where he wasn't allowed to go outside. Since I'm not sure his dad was involved, I'm only giving him negative 1 for that. I just don't think that's a good idea, but I'm gonna give him negative 5 for the other, so negative 6.

Joe: Negative 6 out of, yeah, 10. So for bad personality, I think I agree with you on every point but one. I wouldn't knock him off a point for his parenting style, but obviously you and I would disagree on that.

Joe: I think that the duel over accusing someone of being gay is really bad. I think that The Craftsman started off very high-minded and Cicero and ended up, at least in the samples that get reported on in these books that I've read, it turned into a lot more just mudslinging and name-calling. So I'm going to go negative 4.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Now, how interesting his life is. We can each give him 10 points.

Abram: I don't really think we need to go to review. Most of it's boring and he stopped it, but there are a few points of interest, like the thing with his son and like him almost becoming Prime Minister and a few other stuff. I'm giving him 4 out of 10.

Joe: I have to say, like, fighting a duel is interesting. The stuff with his son, a little bit. The Craftsman stuff I really liked.

Abram: I'm actually changing mine to a 6 because of The Craftsman.

Joe: A 6. I think I'm gonna give him a 5 because it feels a lot like he's not a main character, and so it's hard to make him interesting. I will say that as somebody who has just tried to write an hour-plus long podcast about him, it's hard to make him interesting. So I'm gonna go with a 5.

Joe: Now we're at looks, and each of us can rate him out of 10, and then we divide by 2.

Abram: This is the first one where I think he actually looks good. Looks like he's very strict. You can tell with his eyebrows, and he's writing something. I'll have to give him, I think, 7.

Joe: I mean, he's writing something. It's definitely like The Craftsman. He's wearing very voluminous robes. I don't think he's quite as high as you. I love that he has, like, books. I think they might even be Roman books. And he's next to a Roman column. Oh, you know what? I'm going with 6.

Abram: Which means he gets 6.5.

Joe: Correct. So what is his lifespan, Abram?

Abram: 80 years, which means he gets 8 points.

Joe: And how many points does he get for his term?

Abram: Two days. Let's see. Is that any hundredths?

Joe: It is 0.01.

Abram: Okay, he gets that.

Joe: So that brings his total up to — do you want to guess?

Abram: Uh, I'm guessing like 25.

Joe: Very close. 27.51. Are we gonna leave that 0.01 there? Yes. Yeah, we will. So that makes him higher than Spencer Compton. But honestly, still not that good.

Abram: That leaves the one final question. Known or ice cream cone?

Joe: Actually, I just realized we didn't look at his card. So before we decide on known versus ice cream cone, can we look at his card?

Abram: I personally think this looks like he's annoyed, so I don't like it as much. And he wasn't able to form a government. That's just simplified.

Joe: Yeah, he is the Five of Spades. "Praised for leaving as much money in the treasury as he found it in, he never quite formed a viable government as Prime Minister. After two days, he could only find one person to support him." Actually, as we saw, he found two, but not so good. So, known or ice cream cone?

Abram: Cone.

Joe: Cone. Yeah, we're sorry, Mr. William Pulteney. You were interesting. I loved researching you. I'm glad that you fought against Walpole and his corruption, but you can't rely on defense for both defense and offense.

Joe: That is well put, Abram. So with that, from the woods of New Hampshire, sitting in a building next to a castle still under construction, we say good night. Say goodbye, Abram.

Abram: Bye-bye.

Post-Credits — Tarleton Castle Tour

Guest: Post, of course, means "after."

Abram: Yeah.

Guest: And "sol," you can probably figure that one out because that's the same in Spanish or Italian.

Abram: And the sun.

Guest: Yeah, the sun. Exactly. Very good. The one in the middle is the hard one. But look at the B-I-L-A. If you think of "bill," "bilious," what's bilious? Have you ever heard that word before? Well, bilious means puffy and big, like a cloud.

Abram: Yeah.

Guest: So "after the cloud, sunshine." Yeah.

Joe: Oh, that's very cool.

Guest: That's our family motto. Tarleton is my maternal name. And I liked it because it's not snotty. It includes everybody. Everybody feels that way.

Guest: But that's one of the things we'll be doing here is casting metal. I cast that one at Alfred University through a friend who is a director there.

Guest: If you look here, this staircase runs that way, and then the other one returns. So in order for that to happen, this stairway has to hug the wall and then peel away from it so your head doesn't hit the other steps as it goes up. But I thought it would be fun to see people going in two different directions at once.

Guest: This is the main floor or second level because it's a walkout on the bottom. And then there'll be a Rumford fireplace here.

Guest: So Rumford was — it's a little confusing. Some say he was from Massachusetts. Some say he was from New Hampshire.

Abram: Okay.

Guest: But he perfected the fireplace just about the same time people like Benjamin Franklin were working on iron stoves. So it was kind of too late for his design, but Jefferson used his design on his home.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Guest: And a Rumford fireplace, this is how it'll look when it's done. They're taller than they are wide, and they often have an arched top. And the back, which is already done in brick, I don't know if you can see it with those other bricks in the way, but it leans forward, and it's shallow, and has these angled wings, so it projects heat across the room. You can sit 20 feet away and warm your toes. You don't have to come up to the fire.

Abram: Well, that's cool.

Guest: Rumford was a Tory, so when the Revolution broke out, he moved with his wife to Austria and then Germany. And in Austria, he was a mercenary. And he fought for them. And in gratitude, they made him a count. So when you become a — you're awarded a title, you can assume a name. His wife was from Concord, New Hampshire, which originally was going to be called Rumford. So he took the name Count Rumford. Isn't that cool?

Joe: That is a very cool story. And how high did you say this was again? I'm sorry.

Guest: It's 75 feet tall. So above our heads will be the library on this balcony.

Joe: Uh-huh.

Guest: And then the director's apartment will be over there, a little efficiency. So in theory, I'll live there if I get it done. And then there's a bunk room here. Then on that level, there's a guest room and a puppet and media theater.

Guest: And then the level above that is a full circle. Well, so full circle is the studio, and then you go up into the cone. So that's the fifth level of the studio. And then in the cone there will be a little observatory. I don't know if you notice there's an eyebrow dormer on the cone, and that's what that's for, the observatory. And then that's the sixth level.

Guest: And then the seventh level, there'll be a balcony that extends out from the cone. And the eighth level is just a little crow's nest to help clean the chimney, build the chimney, and put pennants up on the peak.

Joe: Oh yes, because you can't have a tower, a castle, without those, right?

Abram: Yeah.

Guest: And then they hadn't even been started yet, but under the staircase in that section of wall, there's going to be a covered bridge that goes over to a big hall, and that'll be the refectory or dining hall.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Guest: Or a flex space too.

Joe: Amazing. You have given yourself quite a project here.

Guest: Well, there's more too. In different disciplines, we want a studio for glass, foundry metal, ceramics, and everything. So we have to build little studios out through the woods.

Joe: Wow.

Guest: And then we have a new board member who is a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design. And he's been building almost as long as I've been working on this. He's been building a big stone house. And it's about three years from completion. And he was building it as a painter's residency.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Guest: So it's only about 12 minutes from here. So we're gonna combine the two entities. So we'll have 2D art and 3D art on two campuses. Yes.

Joe: This is very cool. I am hugely impressed.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: You have quite a vision here.

Abram: When you're just looking at it here, it looks like very tiny. And since there are like so many floors, it becomes like a lot bigger. That's how I sort of feel.

Joe: Wow.

Guest: Yeah, it is bigger inside than it looks from outside. Especially if you stand down below the castle, then it really looks big because you see the extra floor below us.

Guest: For a couple years, we had interns come from art schools who made a sculpture here and then also worked on the castle or the studio. But COVID interrupted that, so we haven't reinvigorated those programs, but we will.

Joe: It's awesome. That's — I don't have a better word for it. I know, this is awesome. I'm glad that we came all the way up here.

Abram: I am too.

Joe: Good.

Guest: Eventually hundreds of artists will add details to this castle. I had it all designed, but I want to step back and — for example, there are going to be two columns here. So imagine if two friends or a couple or two frenemies each designed a column that related to one another. You know, like a yin and yang or — other way of playing one off another, abstract and realistic or whatever.

Joe: Sounds fantastic. And you said this will be the visitor center?

Guest: Yes, and sometimes functions as that. Right now it's just mostly a storeroom.

Guest: So this is turned around, it's backwards from the way we display it normally. So, you know, you're parked right here. And we're in this building, right? And we just walked up from the castle, right? This is the refectory that we'll build, and this will be an elevator, so it will be wheelchair accessible because I can't make this one wheelchair accessible. There'll be handicap parking here, a ramp. You can do the main floor of the castle where we just were, the covered bridge, and then all levels of this building.

Guest: Here's an example of one of the studios we'll be building. This will be the glass studio. And then, you know, much more to the property.

Joe: Right.

Guest: The big studio I'm building is right about where you are, Abram. It's this where I'm working right now.

Bibliography

Joe: William Pulteney doesn't have any full-length biographies that I've been able to find. And he's even short a few of the parliamentary chapter-length biographies, as he was not officially a Prime Minister.

Joe: Instead, the research for this episode primarily consisted of tallying up all the references to Pulteney in the several reference books that I've already used for Walpole, Henry Pelham, and for Thomas Pelham-Holles, as well as chapter-length biographies in the History of Parliament series. Additional sources are consulted for more detailed looks at certain incidents in his career.

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