Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

4.1 - Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle (Part 1)

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4.1 - Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle (Part 1)

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Part One.

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

Abram: Hello, and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram, and I'm here with my dad. We're reviewing all the British prime ministers from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer. This is episode 4.1, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Part One. We are back to regular episodes.

Joe: Yeah, it's a shame that William Pulteney didn't count.

Abram: He was just prime minister for two days. That's not very long.

Joe: It is longer than most people.

Abram: Most people are prime ministers for no days. But don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at www.primefactorspodcast.com. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, review. It helps us get our podcast known. We don't want to be an ice cream cone.

Joe: We are recording today in the community center in Newcastle, Maine. It's actually pretty nice here, isn't it?

Abram: Yeah, though very long drive that I wish I never did.

Joe: Yeah, it's another three-hour road trip for us. But we'll be recording the next one at home. Although there are a few more Newcastles out there, they're usually named either for the town in the UK or because they actually built a fort there.

Abram: And the ones in the UK are named because they built a new castle there and they have no idea what to call it, so it's sort of the new town thing.

Joe: Yeah, it really demonstrates a complete lack of creativity with town names, if you ask me.

Abram: And then that becomes England and they name it after that here. That's, I think, how it goes.

Joe: That is how it goes. So even though there are other Newcastles, we only want to go to the ones named for the Duke.

Abram: I'm very strict with him. Has to be named after the right person or we don't go.

Joe: Okay, one more thing. We've discussed and decided that we'll be referring to our subject as Thomas Pelham-Holles, pronounced "Holes," instead of Thomas Pelham-Holles, pronounced "Hol-ess." We've heard it both ways, but two of Abram's favorite YouTube channels call him "Holes." So we will too.

Abram: That's how it is in the song.

Joe: And I'd like to give a special shout out to my wife, Abram's mom, who is a 3D printing rock star that helped us with some prints we'll use later in this episode.

Abram: Like the friends thing that I like.

Joe: Oh yeah, we'll talk all about all of these little 3D printed marvels when we get to that part of the episode.

Abram: And we're hoping to add more later on as the story progresses. We're hoping that this will be just the first of many episodes including these special 3D-printed delights.

Joe: 3D-printed delights. I love it. So, are you ready, Abram? Let's talk about Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Abram: Actually, before we talk about Mr. Pelham-Holles, can we play some sad music, please? Thanks.

Abram: Last time we made a mistake. We probably made a lot of mistakes, but in specific, we stated that William Pulteney had only one kid, a son. This isn't true. I've since learned via his somewhat official parliamentary biography that he also had two daughters. That's literally all the biography says, not their names, nor when they were born, or who they married. It's possible they both died in infancy.

Abram: Even though we cannot say anything about them, we at least wanted to mention they existed. I hope they had good lives. Okay, enough sad music. Let's jump in.

Picture This

Joe: It's night. The year: 1715. The air is thick with the pungent scent of smoke and sweat, a literal mob scene as too many men with torches and anger are in the streets. We hear shouting, shattering glass, and less identifiable noises. We follow a young man, just twenty-two, as he pushes his way through to the front of the crowd. His clothes might have been elegant a few hours ago, but now they're ripped and smeared with dirt. His velvet waistcoat and knee-length breeches, once meticulously tailored, are suitable only for rags.

Joe: All around him, the roar of the crowd grows louder. "God save King George!" and "Down with the Pretender!" The group presses forward through the torchlit streets.

Joe: But the shouting wasn't just coming from behind. Torchlight crept along the street in front of them, followed by shouting of their own. Another mob, crying "God save James!" and "Death to the Usurper!" was too close for comfort and too large, packing the street in front of them even as the press of bodies behind pushed Thomas forward.

Joe: He came to his senses. He wasn't being pushed. He was leading this mob. It was his job to keep the peace, and while he didn't expect to be in the thick of things, here he was. He steeled himself as the masses of angry people collided. Their shouts were so loud in his ears now that he couldn't make out individual words, only the all-encompassing anger on both sides.

Joe: Time seemed to stand still as a gunshot pierced the air. Then another. Thomas's heart pounded in his chest as he looked for the shooter. To his right, a man crumpled with a stain of blood spreading across his chest. Was he friend or foe? In the panic and darkness, it was nearly impossible to know. Then another shot and another cry out of someone in pain.

Joe: There wasn't any order. Men fought each other. Windows shattered. Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas couldn't tell if he was catching the flickering of a torch or if a building was on fire. Maybe both.

Joe: He didn't even realize he was running away until he was shoved into an alley. Thomas gasped for breath, both from the exertion and the smoke increasingly in the air. Something was on fire! Desperation settling in, he spied a ladder and scrambled up. His heart thundered in his chest.

Joe: On the rooftop, he surveyed the scene below — a churning mass of bloodied, dirt-streaked men, indistinguishable in their fury. The violence below was a grotesque dance of survival, no clear victor, only the devastation of the mob.

Joe: Thomas turned and ran, leaping from one rooftop to another, the narrow gaps between buildings a mere blur beneath his feet. The sounds of the melee faded behind him as he raced across the rooftops, finally collapsing, panting, to his knees, the chaos of the mob a dimly heard roar behind him. Thomas Pelham-Holles had narrowly escaped with his life.

Joe: The scene blurs and shifts. We're not in the street anymore, but a well-lit pub. Across the table from a couple of old men, Thomas Pelham-Holles is among them, an old man of seventy-five. His clothes are fine and his cheeks might be a little red. Was this a real event in his youth or just a story for old friends at the bar? I guess you'll have to decide for yourself.

Abram: Dun dun dun!

Ancestry

Joe: So Abram, we've already covered the Pelham family history in his brother's episode. But just to remind you of the key bits, right? His grandfather's name is John Pelham, and he's a baronet. His father is Thomas Pelham, and he's right now an MP for East Grinstead. His dad's first wife was Elizabeth Jones, but she died after having two daughters. And Thomas's mother is actually his second wife, the Lady Grace Holles. They married in 1686, and she's important not only because she's his mom, but also because of her brother, his uncle John Holles.

Joe: Now, John Holles had an interesting life, and if we had more time, we could do bonus episodes on so many people.

Abram: But we want to get to the story of all of these prime ministers, not get to the story of all the bonus episodes, and in five years we'd only be on 1850.

Joe: That is true. Let's not do that. So basically, John Holles — kind of funny — he became a member of Parliament in 1689. Do you want to guess how long he was in Parliament for?

Abram: Like thirty years?

Joe: Two days. And the reason is because two days after he was elected, his father died, which is sad. And so suddenly he went from being John Holles, a guy in Parliament, to John Holles, the Earl of Clare, who was naturally enough in the House of Lords. So instead of going to the House of Commons, he went to the House of Lords.

Joe: On March 1st, 1690, John Holles married a woman named Lady Margaret Cavendish. She was the daughter of the Duke of Newcastle. Not the same Duke of Newcastle, obviously, but this is Henry Cavendish, the 2nd Duke of Newcastle. And one of these days —

Abram: Does it have to do with, you know who? I mean, they're related to the Cavendish family, but there are two Cavendishes that became prime minister. One who we'll get into a lot more next episode on Thomas Pelham-Holles, who I think we've already put a pin in, and the other Cavendish-Bentinck, who I don't think we've put a pin in. It's in the early 1800s.

Joe: Yeah, you know, of all the things that I did for research this episode, I didn't actually even check to see how they were related.

Abram: I'm surprised you didn't.

Joe: I'm surprised I didn't too. I should just go back and give up. No, I'm not going to give up. We're going to keep going. But the next prime minister, I will be sure to talk about how they're related to those Cavendishes. Okay.

Abram: Yeah, and Cavendish will be a major character in that one, I should hope.

Joe: It's his episode. So I don't want to do a digression on a digression, but you'll notice that Henry Cavendish was the 2nd Duke of Newcastle, but Thomas Pelham-Holles is going to be called the 1st Duke of Newcastle. And it's because every time the line sort of gets split by not going from father to son, they start over at first.

Abram: That's dumb.

Joe: It's just a little bit extra confusing. So Margaret's family, they're very wealthy, and when her father is going to die in a couple years, he'll be giving the Newcastle fortune to her.

Joe: At the same time as all this is going on, Thomas Pelham, the dad in our story, he's growing in wealth and importance. He served in the Convention Parliament that brought William and Mary to the throne, and he was one of five Lords of the Treasury. He was never the First Lord, so he's not a prime minister, but he was an important person in government. And that is when Thomas and Grace have their first kid, Thomas Pelham.

Silver Spoons

Joe: So Thomas Pelham, he's born on July 21st, 1693. He has two older half-sisters and a third full sister to keep him company. Now, the biographies that I read are not consistent about when the various sisters were born, but unfortunately it's not important to our story. It's, you know, the sexism inherent at the time.

Joe: And this is the part of our podcast where we calculate how many silver spoons our prime ministers are born with. We definitely don't want anyone to take this too seriously, but, you know, it's an interesting rough guide. Since we did Henry Pelham's episode, I actually found a couple more relatives, and so I've adjusted some scoring slightly. Henry now has 24.5 spoons. While Thomas has 25.5.

Abram: Why does he have more?

Joe: Now that's a good question because that's one of the changes that I made in the scoring system. So now I am giving the firstborn son a little bonus because the inheritance is mostly going to go to the firstborn son and not the second ones. So the firstborn sons are going to get higher points because otherwise Thomas would actually have gotten less points than Henry, even though he is the rich brother that got all of the inheritance, both from his uncle and from his dad. But he would actually have gotten lower because his uncle was still an earl at this point. So bottom line is firstborn sons now get bonus points. So congratulations.

Abram: How many points do they get? Two?

Joe: It actually doubles the points that his dad gives him. So if his dad gave him three points, then his dad will give him six. So this way, like, the son of an earl is still going to get less points than the firstborn son of a duke. But it's still going to be pretty fair.

Joe: Just to remind you, right now we have, let's see, Robert Walpole and Pulteney. They both were from wealthy but not long-established families. They got five and 4.5 silver spoons. The Pelhams are in the mid-twenties. They have a more established family and more money. And then Spencer Compton is still our big winner. He was born in a castle. His family is really old money. And they've been around a long time. And he got —

Abram: Yeah, I think that's the only thing he did better than everyone else.

Joe: He got more silver spoons. He definitely got more silver.

Abram: He did get more age points than Walpole, though.

Joe: That's true, because we do give points for how long people live.

Abram: Now that I think about it, it would have made a lot more sense to do how old people were when they got into the office. That actually affects, like, how people view them.

Joe: That's true. Back to our story. So John Holles became a duke in 1694 after his wife's father died. As I said, this wasn't a direct inheritance because he isn't her father's son. He's her father's son-in-law. But William and Mary granted it to him so that his wife could become the Duchess of Newcastle and carry on for her family line.

Joe: They're going to have a daughter. She's about the same age as Thomas, actually. Her name is Lady Henriette Cavendish Holles. They like these double last names. Cavendish Holles. Just remember her because she's going to be in the story in a bit.

Joe: Thomas's brother Henry was born in September 1694. You remember him?

Abram: Yep.

Joe: They did have a few more sisters, but I don't know when they're all born. When Thomas was seven, his mom died. So that's sad. Honestly, that's probably really tough for a kid. I don't even want to think about it. One of the biographies that I read said that he hardly ever mentioned his mother in his letters.

Abram: But maybe that's not surprising because it would probably make him very sad if he did.

Joe: Three years later, his grandfather died. So that means that his father is now the Baronet Pelham. He's going to become an MP. He's also going to become the Vice-Admiral for Sussex. So at this time, there are twelve Vice-Admirals in England, one for each county on the sea, and the job was mostly honorary, but they had to deal with ship-related problems like salvage rights and stuff, resolving disputes, that sort of thing. It was just showing that the Pelham family is becoming more influential.

Joe: He must have done a good job of it because Queen Anne even made him a baron. So he's going to be Baron Thomas Pelham. While all this is going on, Thomas has been studying at the Westminster School.

Abram: Which one?

Joe: In London. The kid.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: We do have a funny story, though.

Abram: Yay!

Joe: So one of our other characters from our podcast is going to that school at the same time.

Abram: Is it Walpole?

Joe: No.

Abram: Compton?

Joe: No.

Abram: Bolsonaro?

Joe: No, it is John Carteret.

Abram: Can't believe we didn't guess Carteret.

Joe: So we are eventually going to know him as Lord Carteret, and he's actually three years younger. So how much time they were spending together, we don't know. But we do know that they knew each other and that they got into some mischief together, what the British might call a jape. I don't know what a jape is, but I think it's a British word.

Joe: None of the biographies go into any details. Apparently, the two got into trouble after drinking too much at a party. Keep in mind that one of them is like ten and the other thirteen, or maybe thirteen and sixteen. They're all way too young to be drinking. So maybe this story isn't quite as true as they might let on, but they at least had some adventures together, maybe when they were school kids.

Joe: When he turned sixteen, he went to Clare College in Cambridge. That's not so young to go into college back then, but he's never going to finish his degree. He doesn't seem to like learning as much as his brother does, and he's not as much of an intellectual, right? While he was there, someone important in his life died. On July 15th, 1711, Uncle John Holles died. Thomas is eighteen, and this is going to change his life forever.

So Much Inheritance

Joe: There's no easy way to put this, right? So Uncle John Holles was hunting in Nottinghamshire when he fell off his horse and he died of his injuries the next day. He was only forty-nine, and he and his wife had only had one daughter, the one that I mentioned, Henriette Cavendish Holles. He didn't have a son to inherit his estate.

Joe: But over the previous decade, Uncle John had gotten really close to Thomas. We don't know the details, but it's clear that he came to think of Thomas as maybe a son or a protégé. But it was a surprise to his wife and daughter when instead of having them in his will, he gave almost all the money to Thomas Pelham.

Joe: There was a catch, as you just figured out. Thomas had to rename himself Thomas Pelham-Holles. So for roughly 35,000 pounds a year, that's like eight million dollars a year in today's money. I don't think he had to think too hard about that.

Joe: Uncle John also left some money to his wife and his daughter, but not nearly as much. Less than a tenth of what he gave to Thomas. Can you believe that?

Abram: Well, he just really didn't care about them.

Joe: I think he cared about them, but definitely he wanted a male heir, and he didn't get a male heir with them. So what do you think his wife thought about this whole situation?

Abram: Probably didn't like it. I mean, probably did like it because it's a podcast. Which one's right?

Joe: His wife, Margaret Cavendish, was really, really angry. He not only gave all of his money, but all of the Cavendish fortune that had just gone to their family from her dad has now gone to Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Abram: He now has Holles in his name.

Joe: So the home where she grew up is now owned by her nephew-in-law. So she was going to fight. She did not want this to happen. She took him to court. But, you know, she's a duchess. She is one of the wealthiest people in England. So she had connections. And she went to somebody else that you know, Robert Harley.

Abram: Is that Oxford?

Joe: That is Oxford. And this is Oxford at the height of his power. He was the Lord High Treasurer under Queen Anne, and he was pretty much the closest that Queen Anne had to a prime minister, right? So she went straight to the top and she got Oxford to help fight to win back the inheritance from Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Joe: But okay, fine. Thomas had a solution. He offered to marry her daughter.

Abram: Who's her daughter?

Joe: Her daughter was Henriette Cavendish Holles. So he offered to marry her. And understand, she's his cousin, right? So that's a little icky. Thomas was eighteen, she was seventeen. Like, ages were probably okay, but his offer was turned down. And the reason why is funny.

Joe: So I don't know if you remember Harley, but he always struck me as a little bit of a villain, don't you think?

Abram: Yeah. What about Bolingbroke? How did he strike you? I feel like he acted more like a villain because he didn't get kicked out of — of after part one. That's true, Bolingbroke was more of a villain, but I think he was the main villain of — if we actually did a silver screen for Walpole, he'd be the main villain.

Joe: That's true. So Robert Harley, who Margaret Cavendish had gone to for help, said, "I have an idea, I'll help you, but I want Henriette to marry my son Edward Harley." So essentially Oxford is now using the power of the government in order to get the Holles-Cavendish fortune for his son.

Abram: Now it's the Holles-Cavendish-Harley fortune.

Joe: Yes.

Abram: That's funny.

Joe: His son was twenty-two, so it wasn't a bad match and he wasn't her cousin. So she said yes.

Abram: Hooray!

Joe: Thomas was winning the court battles. But he did not want to go against Oxford and all of his government connections, right? So while all this was happening, because it took a couple years to work its way through, Thomas's father died. So we're now in 1712. Thomas Pelham-Holles is now the Baron Pelham. Now he has all the Pelham family wealth. So remember, he's going to give a little bit over to Henry, but he gets like the vast majority of the Pelham family estate.

Joe: Thomas isn't old enough to sit in Parliament, but he already wants to be a politician.

Abram: How old do you have to be in Parliament?

Joe: Twenty-one. He's twenty at this point. So he started using all that money he got to put MPs in office, right? Buying rotten boroughs.

Abram: And I wouldn't want to buy rotten boroughs.

Joe: Do you remember what a rotten borough is?

Abram: No.

Joe: A rotten borough in British Parliament is when a town has so few voters that one person can simply buy up all the votes and put whoever they want in as an MP. And we've actually seen that for pretty much every prime minister that we've dealt with so far has been in control of rotten boroughs. Later on, they will change the rules for parliamentary seats, and rotten boroughs will be eliminated, but we're going to have them for a long time.

Joe: In 1714, Thomas, he turns twenty-one, he enters the House of Lords. He finally makes a compromise with Oxford, so Henriette's actually going to get to keep most of the Cavendish fortune. He's just going to keep the Holles fortune. He's still very rich. He's not quite as rich as he might have been, but everyone's happy except, as it turns out, for her mother, the Dowager Duchess. By the way, do you know what a dowager is?

Abram: Yeah, I know that because of the dowager that tried to rule everything in the late Qing Dynasty.

Joe: Oh yeah.

Abram: There was that dowager that tried to rule everything for like thirty-five years and like killed one of the emperors.

Joe: What Abram is referring to is Chinese history.

Abram: I think what happened is the husband died at thirty, and since the next one was like three at the time and died at eighteen, she was still alive by the end. Then after that, there's a new one. She food poisoned him, so he died like the day before she did. And then the last emperor, who was only three, was left to rule solo.

Joe: So the point is Oxford helped his son and his son's wife to get a good deal, but Oxford didn't actually help her to get a good deal. So she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to get more money, and she's not going to succeed. So just goes to show, never underestimate the ability for political people to cheat you out of your inheritance.

Joe: Now, Thomas is one of the richest men in England. He has properties in eleven counties. Count them: Sussex, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, Derby, Kent, and Suffolk. Thomas is already sitting in the House of Lords. He's gaining popularity.

Joe: The problem is that Queen Anne is still alive, and Queen Anne really loves the Tories. So as long as she's in power, the Tories are in power. You know, there's not that much for a young Whig to really be able to do. Oh wait, she just died. August 1st, 1714. Long live King George I!

Newcastle Mobs

Joe: We know this story off by heart at this point. Queen Anne was replaced through the Hanoverian Succession by George I, and he almost immediately yanked all the Tories out of power, putting prominent Whigs in important roles everywhere. So this brings Walpole and Townshend to power, but it also leads to offices for other Whigs and Whig supporters like Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Joe: Thomas was a young and wealthy supporter, so he got several jobs. First, he was made the Lord-Lieutenant of both Middlesex and Nottinghamshire. This meant that he was responsible for county militias, essentially local mini-armies that acted like a cross between soldiers and police. He was made the Vice-Admiral of Sussex, just like his dad was, so he was responsible for protecting the coast of Sussex in at least a different way.

Abram: How come so many things involve Sussex? I feel like it's the most prominent county out of all of our episodes, like both, I think, Pelham and Pelham-Holles. And I think — I'm not sure Pulteney did. I'm not sure if he did, but Sussex seems to be extremely prominent. Like everyone seems to be from Sussex.

Joe: Yeah, well, it could be because of course we went through some of this with Henry. So honestly, I don't know how a twenty-one-year-old could have done even one of those three jobs, but here he had three of them.

Joe: Unfortunately, he was also needed. The succession brought violence. Jacobites saw their chance of a James III slipping away, while even the loyal Tories were ripped from government and all their high-paying jobs. This led to riots, unrest across England. In Scotland, it's going to give rise to the 1715 Insurrection that we talked about in Henry Pelham's episode.

Joe: Some of the worst rioting was in October 1714, around when George I was to be crowned. These so-called Coronation Riots swept through London, other parts of England. Mobs essentially saw this as their last chance to preserve their God-appointed monarchy, at least as they saw it. Thomas, as the Lord-Lieutenant, was one of the people responsible for keeping the peace, putting down these mobs.

Joe: And much later, he would reminisce about these riots, saying, quote, "I love a mob. I headed a mob once myself. We owe the Hanoverian Succession to a mob."

Joe: Thomas was known to exaggerate a bit, but there was a real danger here, even if there was little chance that any number of angry people could have prevented George I from putting that special hat on his head.

Joe: But what was this about him heading a mob? That's a little bit more difficult to pin down. During the unrest that continued from 1714 to 1715, riots broke out in different cities at different times, often around dates that were important to the Jacobite cause. And depending on the biographies that you read, Thomas either grew his militias into so-called Newcastle Mobs to defeat the insurgents at their own game, or maybe he was inspired by leaders in Nottinghamshire that kind of showed him how to do it. These mobs are going to go toe to toe during these riots with the Jacobite mobs.

Joe: Under his authority, almost 1,000 men in Middlesex that he feared were sympathetic to the Jacobites, they were all arrested. And this is where our opening scene comes in. Thomas is much later going to sketch out a scene where he was leading the mob, two men were shot, and then he ended up fleeing across the rooftops to safety.

Joe: I'm inclined to believe him, because if it were a lie, I think he would have made himself sound a little bit braver. It's like, oh no, some people got shot, I ran away. Not exactly the story that you would make up, I think. Which riot this was though, whether it was in 1714 or 1715, what town it happened in, I can't find anything that says one way or the other. So we'll just assume it happened at some point.

Joe: You might also notice that I called them Newcastle Mobs. That's because Thomas was made the Duke of Newcastle in January 1715, thanks to his support of the Hanoverians. I said in Henry Pelham's episode that it was because of his work in the 1715 Insurrection, like he called up all those troops, those dragoons.

Abram: The dragons.

Joe: The dragons. That doesn't seem to be the case. The point is, some of these dates are hard, especially the old-style dates versus the new-style dates, and some of the sources are inconsistent about what happened.

Abram: This New Year's is January 1st by now, not March 25th.

Joe: No, this is still old-style dates in the story. The New Year's didn't change until Henry Pelham was prime minister.

Abram: Oh yeah.

Personality

Joe: With all the titles, court cases, and mob violence, you might have noticed that Thomas Pelham-Holles didn't do one thing that almost all of his predecessors did, and that is he never took his Grand Tour of Europe. In some ways, of course, he was busy. He had the death of his father to deal with, the death of his uncle, all those legal battles. So maybe he didn't get to enjoy that much of his young adulthood, but there might have been another reason as well, and that is that Thomas Pelham-Holles was afraid to travel by boat.

Joe: Since we have a little breather in our story, let's take a minute to talk about his personality. One of the first things that people say about Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle, is that he is bad at money. He's one of the richest men in England, but he had no idea how to manage it. He even thought that dealing with money was beneath his dignity as a duke.

Joe: By 1720, he is going to be so bad at his money, and he has spent so much money, that he's going to have to borrow money from his brother.

Abram: Whoa.

Joe: Yes. He's got to mortgage his properties, he's going to have to set up a trust to keep all of his own spending in line. And then when the South Sea Bubble bursts, he's going to lose 6,000 pounds, which is —

Abram: Most of his money.

Joe: Not most, but a lot of money.

Abram: Is it like ten percent of his money?

Joe: I think the challenge is that we know how much he would have had if he would have won that court battle, which is 35,000 pounds. But I'm not sure how much he's actually making right now, especially because he is spending money so fast. So 6,000 pounds, I think, is a big dent. Whether it's ten percent or not, I can't really say.

Joe: A close friend, actually one of his mentors and guardians briefly after his father died, Archdeacon Bowers, remarked in 1715, quote, "I am sure your lordship cannot go six months with the way you are in without plunging yourself in such difficulties as will make you uneasy all your lifetime."

Joe: Biographers that are trying to be nice say that he spent his money on political patronage and buying seats and greasing palms, but less kind ones say that he spent much of his money on just constantly upgrading all of his houses, especially Claremont in Sussex and his London estates. He spent lots of money on parties. I have biographies that just spend an entire page going through all of the stuff that he bought at this party or at that party. It's like, how many deer do you really need for a party? I have no idea. He loved to throw huge parties, thousands of modern dollars' worth of food. And he loves food, and he's especially going to become enamored with French cuisine, and he's even going to hire a French chef.

Joe: So speaking of parties, Thomas was, like so many men, kind of a heavy drinker, a habit that he might have picked up with Lord Carteret back in Westminster when he went to school, if you believe that. He wrote in his letters that he was, quote, "rarely sober" during many of the wild parties and other gatherings that he arranged when he was winning points and influencing people.

Joe: By 1722, however, this is going to be something he works on. He's actually going to write a letter to his wife reassuring her that he is no longer drinking heavily and that he is staying sober during these parties. So this must have been something.

Abram: Is he —

Joe: I didn't mention his wife yet because he's going to marry in a second. I kind of jumped ahead a little bit just to tell you that he is working on his drinking problem. He's still going to drink a lot of French wine, but at least he's going to drink it in moderation.

Joe: In terms of his politics, Thomas Pelham-Holles is very different from the people that we've spoken about so far. Walpole believed that power should reside in the House of Commons and that the Commons is a check on the king. And you know that Henry Pelham and William Pulteney, they largely followed what Walpole believed. Spencer Compton, he was kind of everywhere. He just wanted to make friends and just agree with whoever he was talking to.

Joe: But Thomas thought that real power should be in the House of Lords, but not just any lords, the current lords. He was very much against new lords being created. He liked the concentration of wealth being exactly where it was, but he also thought that a powerful aristocracy was the best check on the king. So kind of a very different man than Robert Walpole was.

Joe: Even by the standards of his time, Thomas was a religious man. He went to church twice a day. Maybe not every day, but twice a day pretty often. As far as we know, he never took advantage of the corruption in the system to enrich himself, although that could possibly be just because he was so bad at money. But later in life, he is going to contribute to missionary organizations that'll try to spread Christianity around the world. So definitely religion is something that is important to him.

Abram: And in part two, we'll see, I think, more of that. That we don't necessarily like.

Joe: Yeah, there's — he has a little bit of anti-Jewish stuff that we'll get to in the next episode.

Joe: We don't know about his hobbies, but he is known to have written poetry. None of it survived, so I can't say if it's good or bad, but if it was good, I would have made you read it.

Joe: So despite his wealth, he was criticized for being too informal. And what we mean by that, Abram, is that a rich person's supposed to be very hoity-toity and very posh and speak in a certain way, but he was criticized because he acted more like a normal person. So I guess I can't really complain about that. He wasn't acting like his class.

Joe: He was also known to have very thin skin, and several people remarked that he would cry easily when he gets upset. Even as an adult, he would sometimes just cry over stuff, and I feel a little bad for him. Once his younger brother is going to start climbing through the ranks, Thomas is apparently going to be a little jealous of him, right? Henry didn't get all the opportunities that Thomas got, but Henry is going to be prime minister before him, and I think that's going to be a little bit challenging for him.

Joe: He also is weirdly afraid of getting cold feet. There's one story that I read later in his life, so this hasn't happened yet, where he stood on the long robe of a duke just to keep his feet from getting too cold.

Abram: That's not good.

Joe: It's a little bit impolite. It's like, I'm going to stand on your clothes. And finally, his final quirk is he likes to sleep in beds that have already had someone else sleep in them first. Ew. I don't know, but that's a weird thing. I can't explain it.

Joe: The point is that Thomas Pelham-Holles is surprisingly quirky, and we didn't really get this impression of any of the other people that we talked about so far. Like, I didn't really understand any of their personalities, but here we're seeing a more complete person. So I'm hoping that, you know, some of our future biographies —

Abram: But we'll try to give him points for that, or at least not subtract points for it.

Joe: I think he's an interesting and quirky person, and this — you know, we're both interesting and quirky people, so I can appreciate that about him.

Joe: While we're talking about his personality, we weren't paying attention. It's 1716 and Walpole's about to rebel against Sunderland and Stanhope. I mean, Stanhope.

Abram: It's like if you combined him with a turnip.

Joe: No, Townshend has the turnips.

Abram: How was that?

Joe: Oh, Townshend, after resigning from government, went to study farming and became famous for farming turnips, and they called him Turnip Townshend.

Abram: Revolution? Yes.

Joe: That's stupid.

Abram: It's amazing.

Lord Chamberlain

Joe: Just to remind you, in 1716 we had the Big Whig Split, right? Walpole and Townshend went into opposition against Sunderland and Stanhope, and Pulteney joined them. But Thomas Pelham-Holles and Spencer Compton, they both stayed on the Sunderland-Stanhope side.

Joe: It doesn't matter, but the reason they split was that Walpole was pushing back on English foreign policy becoming Hanoverian foreign policy, and Sunderland and Stanhope were more willing to do whatever the king wanted, including do things that, in Walpole's view, did not support England but rather supported Hanover.

Joe: The cool thing about this is now we have two prime ministers, two future prime ministers, on each side. Walpole with Pulteney and Thomas Pelham-Holles with Spencer Compton. I'm not going to tell you which side I'd rather be on. So just to give you some context, Henry Pelham isn't even in Parliament yet, so he's not involved in this.

Joe: So Thomas had a second reason to stay with Sunderland and Stanhope. He was wooing Henrietta Godolphin, Sunderland's niece through marriage and the daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. So she was super rich. And if Thomas managed to marry her, not only would he be even richer, but then he'd get even deeper Whig political connections.

Joe: So he stayed with Sunderland and Stanhope, and his loyalty was rewarded. He was given a new job. He is now the Lord Chamberlain to George I. So this is a big thing, but not technically a government job. He's going to be in charge of managing the royal household, what they call "above stairs." That means that he's managing the public face for the visits and the functions that the king's going to host.

Joe: About two-thirds of the staff will report to Thomas Pelham-Holles. And guess what? That means that he can kind of give his friends jobs and stuff like that, you know, because that was the way patronage worked at the time. All the little corruption in government that happened back then. He's also going to be able to become much closer to George I, maybe even friends.

Joe: But this job came with a weird side role. So Thomas is now responsible for censoring the plays in London. Why does the Lord Chamberlain censor the plays? I have no idea. We can keep this in mind when we score him, because he's going to be pro-censorship. In general, he really didn't like lowbrow theater. He did like opera, so he used this job in order to basically get himself put in charge of the Royal Academy of Music and bring proper entertainers into London. And his funding is going to be what brings Handel to England.

Joe: So I've got to warn you right now, there's some sad stuff coming involving babies. So sorry.

Joe: Thanks to his tight relationship with Sunderland and Stanhope, he successfully wooed Henrietta Godolphin. So he is now married to Henrietta Godolphin, and they are going to try to have kids. And unfortunately, this is a problem. She becomes pregnant, but she gets very sick during the pregnancy, and she ends up losing the baby. We don't know what happens, but we know that she'll never be able to have kids after this.

Abram: Which means Pelham-Holles has no kids.

Joe: So Pelham-Holles has no kids. At around the same time, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the future King George II and Queen Caroline, they have a baby born in November 1717. The baby is going to be called Prince George William. I'm seeing a little bit of a look on your face. No, this isn't a future king. We'll get to that in a second.

Joe: The important thing for Thomas is that King George is going to name him as the baby's godfather in recognition of his work as Lord Chamberlain. Now, I don't know how important or official that would have been, but a godparent is supposed to be there for the baby's religious growth, be there for the baptism. I don't really know how much was expected. But Abram, the Hanoverian fathers and sons were famous for one thing. Do you remember what it was?

Abram: Having wigs?

Joe: Well, yes, they had wigs, but all of the Hanoverians, the dads and the sons, didn't really get along, right?

Abram: Yep.

Joe: So Prince George, the future George II, was utterly furious at his dad for making Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle, a person that the future George II didn't like, making him his baby's godparent.

Joe: So there was some sort of argument in the palace, and the prince supposedly told Thomas, "I will find you," but in his German accent it sounded more like "I will fight you." Thomas thought that he had been challenged to a duel with the prince!

Joe: So George I, he called an emergency cabinet meeting, and thankfully, the future George II, George Augustus, admitted that he didn't intend to challenge Thomas to a duel. He was just angry. King George was so upset by this whole mess that he put his son into house arrest, prevented him from attending opposition Whig events with Walpole and Pulteney and others. And basically, well, the future George II is not going to remember Thomas Pelham-Holles very kindly.

Joe: Unfortunately, he's not going to need to worry about being a godfather because the infant prince dies a couple months later. There's so much death back then. It's really hard.

Joe: So King George is going to thank Thomas by making him a knight. He is a knight in the Order of the Garter, made in 1718.

Abram: Knight of Hundies!

Joe: He is a Knight of Undies. The king has said, "Thank you for dealing with my weird son, I guess. Here's a knighthood." So he's going to stay Lord Chamberlain till 1724. He's going to fight against subversive theater, and he's going to make sure that the king's parties go pretty well.

Britain vs. Everyone

Joe: We're just about up to the point where Thomas Pelham-Holles is going to become a Secretary of State.

Abram: Even though there aren't actually states.

Joe: No, but they still call it the Secretary of State. It's "state" not as in the United States, right? We think of states as a subdivision, but most of the rest of the world sees the word "state" as being the same as a country. It's a weird American thing.

Joe: So keeping track of Britain's constantly changing alliances and wars is really tough. So what we're going to do is we're going to play a game together. And you could play at home. And we call it "Britain versus Everyone," the board game.

Joe: So the game is in two parts. We have these tokens, one for each of the major countries that's going to be playing this game with Britain right now.

Abram: Except Hanover.

Joe: Except Hanover. We have Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Spain, and Savoy. And that's just part of Northern Italy, but it was independent in the 1700s, so we decided to include it.

Abram: What about France?

Joe: I didn't say France. We have France too.

Abram: And we also have a Jacobite one in case we need it.

Joe: In case we need it, we have a Jacobite one.

Abram: And we're hoping to continue this until the very end. So there'll eventually be a colonies one to turn into the US, or we might eventually have a Germany and an Italy. It just all depends on if we decide to keep on doing the token stuff.

Joe: Yeah. So my wife made these little game pieces for us. She's amazing. Abram, you have an amazing mom.

Abram: I do.

Joe: So let's talk about what we have here. So this one for France is what?

Abram: The Eiffel Tower.

Joe: Okay, great. And this one for the Netherlands is what?

Abram: A windmill.

Joe: Great. And this one for Portugal is what?

Abram: It's a tower.

Joe: I think it is the Belém Tower. It is a famous tower in Lisbon somewhere. In Austria, we have a cathedral. And in specific, this is St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, a place that I've been to, but you've never been. So we'll have to take you sometime. For Spain, we have —

Abram: We're supposed to have a boat, so I'm just going to say we have a boat.

Joe: We don't really have a boat. We were supposed to have a Spanish galleon, but it didn't 3D print very well. So what we have instead is just a steering wheel for a boat.

Abram: With an anchor on it.

Joe: With an anchor on it. So maybe we'll get a Spanish galleon next time.

Abram: And Sardinia.

Joe: Well, we have two. We have Savoy and Sardinia, and they are both —

Abram: They're both rooks with a little staircase and an entrance and a window.

Joe: Yes.

Abram: I feel like that's cute. I've never seen rooks like this, but I like them like this.

Joe: So our board is in front of Abram. So from left to right, our board says "Allies," "Friends," "Neutral," "Enemies," and "At War." And as we cycle through British foreign policy, we're going to update where each one of these tokens is. So we're about to hit 1721, but we're going to rewind. Are you ready, Abram?

Abram: Yep.

Joe: 1703, the War of Spanish Succession. Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, and Savoy are allies. Allies are over there.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: And Britain is at war with France and Spain.

Abram: And they're currently enemies with the Jacobites.

Joe: Yeah, we can leave the Jacobites right there. That's fine.

Abram: Because the Jacobites aren't in the war, but they're still enemies.

Joe: Yeah, the Jacobites aren't really a country. They're mostly supported by France. But that's okay. We'll keep them there.

Joe: So, 1713. The Treaty of Utrecht ended the war. France and Spain are no longer at war. They are now just enemies.

Abram: Okay, so now there are three in the enemies.

Joe: And Austria becomes just our friend.

Abram: Aw, they're no longer best friends. They're no longer besties.

Joe: So during the War of Spanish Succession, Britain managed to capture Gibraltar. Do you know where Gibraltar is?

Abram: Not Spain, but near Spain. And near Morocco.

Joe: Correct. Gibraltar is kind of like the tip of the strait between Spain and Morocco.

Abram: Even though it actually is not the tip of the strait of it.

Joe: Abram is drawing me a map of the Mediterranean.

Abram: This is Gibraltar. This is Spain. This is Morocco. Now do you know what I mean?

Joe: Yep. And what are those other two boxes that you drew?

Abram: Ceuta and Melilla. They're autonomous cities of Spain.

Joe: Oh, they're autonomous cities of Spain on the coast of Morocco.

Abram: Do you like my map?

Joe: I just have to reiterate that you need to be the one teaching and not the one making jokes, because I learned something today.

Abram: Yeah, Gibraltar isn't really the tip of it.

Joe: Okay, the point is Britain captured Gibraltar in that war. Spain also lost a lot of their Italian territories, so you can expect a little bit more war soon.

Joe: Next, 1717, the War of the Quadruple Alliance. France and Austria are now allies.

Abram: Austria's back as an ally. And France switches sides completely.

Joe: Switches sides completely. Portugal's now a friend and Spain is at war.

Abram: So Spain is back at war and the Jacobites are enemies, but they aren't in the war.

Joe: So this is because Spain started a war to reclaim the bits of Italy they lost. And honestly, most of the fighting was in Sicily. And that lasted till 1720. Spain did not get Gibraltar back, but now it's just an enemy instead of at war.

Abram: Can't Spain ever stay the same?

Joe: No. But in the Treaty of The Hague, Savoy goes away. Bye-bye, Savoy. And now it's replaced by Sardinia because the Duke of Savoy became the King of Sardinia. And I bet he was probably pretty happy about that. So this catches us up to where we are right now in 1721.

Abram: Okay, so in Allies we have Sardinia, Austria, France, and the Netherlands. Friends, we have Portugal. Neutral, no one. Enemies, we have Spain and the Jacobites. At War, no one. And dead, Savoy.

Joe: I wouldn't say dead, but okay.

Walpole Takes Charge

Joe: All right, so as we covered before, Walpole latched on to the South Sea Company crisis to completely take control of government and he became Britain's first prime minister.

Abram: No, it wasn't actually called that until 1905, 1908, one of those years.

Joe: Correct, it wasn't called prime minister yet. So we've already seen how everyone reacted to Walpole so far. Spencer Compton, he kind of floated above the fray, staying Speaker of the House no matter who was in charge. Henry Pelham, he's in Parliament by the way, became Walpole's disciple. William Pulteney, well, he went from friend to enemy almost overnight.

Joe: And while Thomas is eventually going to join his brother to support Walpole, he is not happy about this. He supports Sunderland, he supports Stanhope, but after both of them die in quick succession —

Abram: Yes, Stanhope, I think, died at this point, and Sunderland's about to die.

Joe: Correct. He had no choice but to ally with Walpole. Other than wanting to keep the Tories and the Jacobites out, they didn't really have compatible political views. Thomas wrote, quote, "I neither like their person nor credit their interests." He doesn't like Walpole right now.

Joe: Now, they're eventually going to work better, but I can't help but think that maybe Thomas is always a little bit unhappy on the inside. Now, this isn't going to happen for a while, but do you remember that Pulteney had that newspaper?

Abram: Yep, The Craftsman.

Joe: He's going to start it in a couple years. So when Thomas Pelham-Holles eventually dies, they're going to discover that he had secretly collected many volumes of The Craftsman for his personal library. So I can't help but wonder, maybe Walpole and Newcastle were allies, but maybe they really weren't friends.

Joe: They had a great election in 1722. Thomas was able to prove to Walpole that he could still bring in seats through his money and his connections, and Walpole was leaning on him more and more. Walpole liked Thomas Pelham-Holles. He wasn't a forceful personality. He wasn't as good of a speaker, but he was somebody that Walpole could work with to get things done. You might less politely say that maybe it was somebody that Walpole could work with and control.

Joe: At the time, Walpole was having some difficulty with Lord Carteret, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, and Walpole arranged to put him on a boat to Ireland. Carteret's in charge of Ireland now, but he's no longer Secretary of State. And so Walpole promoted the person that just helped him win that election: Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle.

Abram: I think he moved up from being maybe a bishop or a knight to a rook or something.

Joe: Yes. To take our chess metaphor from a couple of weeks ago, yes. But think about this. Walpole just put someone in charge of Britain's foreign policy, or at least half of it, who had never left England.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: But Thomas took the job seriously. He tried to learn quickly. He took extensive notes in meetings. He would often work long and odd hours. One quote about him says, quote, "His Grace of Newcastle might be at midnight forty miles off of Tyrol near Oxford, and the next morning at seven at Kensington." He threw himself into his work.

Joe: One of the reasons that he might have been throwing himself into his work was because his wife was having some health problems. She was often ill, both physically and mentally. Her issues didn't stop with just not being able to have children, and she was going to frequently travel to Bath to rest and recuperate, during which time she and Thomas would write many letters to each other.

Joe: Thomas might be a little embarrassed about some of these letters that survived because he wasn't that afraid of sharing some stuff in those letters. Do you want to hear it?

Abram: What?

Joe: He would write to his wife and tell her that he was having trouble pooping.

Abram: Oh, potty humor for the eleven-year-old. Yes.

Joe: You should not have brought that up.

Abram: We should not have brought that up.

Joe: So 1725, the Treaty of Vienna was signed between Austria and Spain. Britain is still enemies with Spain, but we're going to move Austria from Allies to Neutral.

Joe: Also 1725, riots broke out in Scotland over the new Malt Tax, essentially taxing types of alcohol. England had the tax already, Scotland didn't. Maybe we need to have a Scotland token. But the point is Newcastle and Walpole blamed the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Abram: Secretary of Scotland?

Joe: Yeah, actually, you're right, that is a little strange. But since the Act of Union in, what, 1707, Scotland has been a part of the United Kingdom, but they still had a separate Secretary of State. And Newcastle actually blamed the Secretary of State for maybe fanning the flames of these riots. A guy by the name of John Ker, the Duke of Roxburghe.

Joe: So Newcastle basically took over responsibility for Scotland himself, and he abolished the role of Secretary of State for Scotland. So although Thomas Pelham-Holles started out as a student of foreign policy, by 1727 he felt quite comfortable disagreeing with Townshend, and he's going to start to push to become the leader.

George II

Joe: So on June 11th, 1727, George I died, and his son became George II. Now, we've seen this event from every possible angle by now, so just a reminder, George II really doesn't like Walpole or Newcastle. He tries to get Spencer Compton to be prime minister. That doesn't work. Walpole takes over.

Joe: But we now have this situation where George II is in charge, and he still really doesn't like Thomas Pelham-Holles. So once George II is king, he's going to start taking regular trips back to Hanover. And Walpole is going to ask him to take Thomas, the Duke of Newcastle, with him, and King George II is going to say no. So they might be working together okay, but he really didn't want to spend that much time around him.

Joe: In order to get any view into what's going on in George II's household, Thomas ends up becoming good friends with his daughter, Princess Amelia. It's a little bit of a scandal. Some people think they're a little bit too flirty, but most commentators think that they were just friends.

Taking Control

Joe: With a new king on the throne, Spain decided, 1727, that they wanted to get Gibraltar back.

Abram: They just can't stop deciding that.

Joe: Yeah, well, that's why we have all these pieces here, right, to keep track of who doesn't like who. And the important thing is that Britain, like, hates France and the Bourbon family, the royal family right now, and Spain was taken over by the Bourbons in 1700. So that's part of why they hate them extra. And a lot of these battles, right, they're not only in Europe, but they're also in the New World. You have the English colonies and the Spanish colonies and the French colonies. I think we're going to be talking about this a lot more next episode because we're going to get to the Seven Years' War very soon.

Joe: So Spain attacks, tries to get Gibraltar back, and it's called the Anglo-Spanish War of 1727. So Abram, will you move Spain back to the "At War" column? But Spain just signed something called the Treaty of Vienna, and now we are not so sure that Austria is going to be our friend.

Joe: So Britain's going to mostly fight this war by defending Gibraltar, attacking Spanish colonies in Panama, Portobello. Britain doesn't get very far in this war, but neither does Spain, and Gibraltar stays firmly under control.

Abram: Austria offers to here.

Joe: That sounds great.

Abram: Because they aren't like enemies, but they're no longer like completely neutral.

Joe: Yep. So this is where Townshend and Thomas Pelham-Holles start to disagree. So remember that Townshend is the Secretary of State for the Northern Department. He's the senior Secretary of State. Thomas Pelham-Holles is the Secretary of State for the Southern Department.

Abram: Why is there a Northern Department and a Southern Department again?

Joe: Well, it's because there's a lot of countries in the world, and Britain at the time thought that one person should be responsible for like the northern countries. So that was Scotland and Scandinavia, and I think the Holy Roman Empire. And then someone else would be the southern, and that would be like the Mediterranean world. I don't have the list in front of me of which ones did which, and actually it doesn't matter because they would frequently sort of trade up who was responsible for what. But the point was, at the time, they thought that they needed two people in order to be in charge of the world.

Joe: So this is where Thomas Pelham-Holles and Townshend are disagreeing. By 1729, Townshend was mostly afraid that Austria was slipping away. So Townshend wanted to be better friends with Austria, and he wanted to keep fighting the Spanish. But Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, was worried that Austria was getting ready to become our enemy. And so he wanted to make peace with Spain so that they could be ready to fight Austria if they needed to.

Joe: In the end, Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, got his way. The Anglo-Spanish War was ended by something called the Treaty of Seville. So Spain is now moving into just the Enemies column, and Townshend is going to be pretty unhappy about this. So in fact, he's going to be so unhappy that he decides to resign as the Secretary of State.

Joe: And the guy who negotiated the Treaty of Seville, his name is William Stanhope. So he's not the other Stanhope. He's a cousin, I think. He's actually great friends with Thomas Pelham-Holles. So as thanks for writing this treaty, he's going to end up being Townshend's replacement as Secretary of State.

Abram: And now Townshend gets to deal with turnips.

Joe: And now Townshend gets to deal with turnips. So everyone's happy. But in 1731, Thomas Pelham-Holles realizes that Townshend wasn't completely wrong. So he signs the Treaty of Vienna, another Treaty of Vienna. And now Austria is our ally again. Yay, allies!

Abram: They're just controlling Austria at this point.

Joe: This treaty also ensured that the Habsburg Empire would not be split on Charles's death. So at this point, both of Britain's enemies are happy — Austria, as much of an enemy as they were, and Spain.

Abram: And what about the Jacobites? They aren't really involved in anything.

Joe: Yeah, they're still enemies. So this treaty had an unfortunate side effect, and that is that France is really upset about it. And guess what? They're the enemy again. Moving France over.

Losing Control

Joe: We've got to fast-forward a couple years. You remember from Walpole's episode, he tried to increase taxes, he got really unpopular. More and more Whigs are joining Pulteney's faction. Pulteney started The Craftsman. Like, we've all covered this a whole bunch of times, but the important thing is that Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, is going to stay with Walpole in what they called the Old Corps Whigs.

Joe: But even though Thomas Pelham-Holles is supporting Walpole publicly, privately they're disagreeing more. And their bigger disagreement is over the War of Polish Succession. And that's a civil war in Poland. France and Spain were backing one side, Austria, the Holy Roman Empire, and others, Prussia, on the other side. And Newcastle wanted to join that war. He said that Britain needed to honor the treaty that they just signed with Austria.

Abram: And see, look, Austria is even in the Allies column, even though it's on the closer-to-Friends side.

Joe: Yep. So Walpole, he didn't want to spend the money on another war. He really didn't want to be in the War of Polish Succession. There's just so many succession wars these days. Walpole said no. They found a reason that they could just ignore the treaty and save some money. But Austria is going to be really upset about this. And so they're moving back to Neutral.

Abram: Oh, that's a huge jump. Are they closer to Friends or Enemies?

Joe: I think they're closer to Enemies, so put them there.

Joe: So Walpole is so upset by Thomas, the Duke of Newcastle, that he starts to strip him of his powers. So even though Thomas Pelham-Holles is still the Secretary of State, Walpole starts cutting him out. He stops getting all the messages. Now everything's going through Walpole. And in fact, it's going to be Walpole and Queen Caroline that pretty much control foreign policy for a little while.

Abram: Doesn't Queen Caroline die soon?

Joe: She dies in like three sentences. So she's going to die soon. But Queen Caroline, before she died, said something about Thomas Pelham-Holles that I thought I would read. She said that Thomas Pelham-Holles is, quote, "such a mixture of fiddle-faddle and popularity that there's just no making anything of him." Yeah, she can't figure him out.

Joe: Essentially, Thomas is going to be blocked from being effective in foreign policy, so he's going to spend some time kind of doing other things. In 1736, he gets put in charge of appointing bishops for the Church of England. In 1737, he gets put in charge of the Board of Trade for the colonies.

Joe: So if any of the colonies are kind of upset right now, it might be Thomas Pelham-Holles's fault. He becomes the High Steward —

Abram: The colonies, which ones?

Joe: The American colonies.

Abram: Okay, so that's the first mention of them, I'm pretty sure. Not the first mention, but the first mention of them, like, that's actually in the story instead of us just talking about them.

Joe: Yeah, maybe. I think that you might be right about that.

Abram: So put a pin in them. They'll become important later.

Joe: What? They're important?

Abram: Yep, the colonies will be important.

Joe: Ah, crikey.

Abram: Yeah, now pins we do for prime ministers or things that are important later.

Joe: So finally, he becomes the High Steward of Cambridge University. You know, remember, he didn't even get a degree, but now he represents the university on government matters, and he can even set some academic policy stuff, although it's mostly ceremonial.

Joe: While this is going on, he also pretty much completely loses control of his finances. He has to borrow more money from his brother. All of his properties are placed in trust. He gets a salary of 7,000 pounds a year, something like two and a half million dollars a year, sort of to live on.

Joe: Now, he's going to fight against this and there's going to be some changes. But basically, from this point to the rest of his story, his financial independence is going to be a little bit less. So the bottom line is that he's going to have new financial issues and it's going to change every couple of years. But for right now, he is kind of locked into a fixed amount of spending. He'll ignore it as often as he likes, but the people that he owes a lot of money to are getting a little bit annoyed with him.

Three Prime Ministers

Joe: In November 1737, Queen Caroline dies. Oh yeah. Well, she was the glue that was connecting Walpole to George II. So he's now starting to lose favor with the king. You know, at this point, Townshend is gone. So, you know, there's fewer connections that way as well.

Joe: And this allows Thomas Pelham-Holles to make a stronger push. So he's trying to become in charge again. He's going to push for Britain to fight in the War of Jenkins' Ear. So we need to move Spain to the "At War" column.

Joe: So even though Walpole didn't want to fight Spain in the War of Jenkins' Ear, he's still going to get blamed for it going badly. And it's going to be so bad that eventually Walpole has to resign.

Joe: Just about the same time Walpole was resigning, now we have the War of Austrian Succession. So France is now in the "At War" column.

Abram: No, but are the Jacobites?

Joe: We'll just keep the Jacobites with the French. Yeah, that's fine.

Abram: And it won't be until like the Jacobite Wars and Henry Pelham will actually separate them and have France be enemies and Jacobites be friends.

Joe: Well, remember there was a Jacobite insurrection in 1745, so we can keep them in the "At War" column. That's fine.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: There are other countries, by the way, fighting this war — Bavaria, Prussia, Sweden — but they're not getting involved, and we didn't make little tokens for them. But mostly Britain right now is just trying to fight to keep France and Spain from either one of them becoming dominant, right? This is about maintaining a balance of power in Europe.

Joe: But oh no, Spencer Compton just died! I didn't even remember to mention that Spencer Compton became prime minister.

Abram: Dot dot dot. Because he's so forgettable.

Joe: Spencer Compton died. Okay. Henry Pelham is now the prime minister, and that's actually kind of hard for Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle. His younger brother now has more political power than he does. He's been helping him with his finances. And really, he's — as I said, he has some jealousy issues to work through here.

Joe: So in 1748, Thomas is going to take his first ever trip to Europe. So he's going to be there for almost two years negotiating with various world powers, including the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. And he's also going to buy a lot of French wine to take back to Britain because he really likes French wine. So we can take France and Spain out of the "At War" column and we can put them back in the Enemies column.

Joe: Mostly we covered all this in Henry Pelham's episode. So there were some back and forths. He returned to France in 1752, but for the most part, things are going pretty swimmingly for Thomas Pelham-Holles. So we have a little bit of a lull in our story, but not a lull in our podcast.

Newcastle, Maine

Joe: So Henry Pelham is now prime minister, and with a little lull in our story for Thomas Pelham-Holles, we have a special date. June 19th, 1753 is the date that the District of Newcastle in what will eventually be Maine — although at the time it's the Province of Massachusetts Bay — was incorporated. So that's where we are today.

Abram: All right.

Joe: We are in the town community center. There's maps, there's photos.

Abram: More like a town government building.

Joe: Yeah, everything here is just — yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Abram: Even a fancy flag right there.

Joe: There's even a fancy flag where, like, they have their town meetings.

Joe: The thing is, I'm really excited about this because Newcastle allows me to talk about one of the untold stories in American colonization. So, you know, everyone knows about Plymouth and Boston and Jamestown and Roanoke and how old New York was once New Amsterdam, but there's a really important aspect of our history that happened right here, and it's rarely told.

Joe: So let me set the scene. We're on something like a peninsula between the Sheepscot River to the west and the Damariscotta River to the east. We're not that far from the coast. We're not even all that far up in Maine. We're maybe a bit south of the middle of the coast of Maine, right? We're closer to Boston than we are to New Brunswick.

Abram: Okay, so I think we're on — there's like a little lump in Maine, and then like that.

Joe: Abram has drawn us a map.

Abram: I think we're probably closer to like New Brunswick than like Plymouth, but not Boston.

Joe: Yeah, I think so. The point is we're about 150 miles northeast of Boston, right? So we're pretty far.

Joe: Before the colonial times, this region was home to the Eastern Abenaki people. We briefly talked about the Western Abenaki in the episode about Pelham, New Hampshire, I think, but this is a different but related group, mostly nomadic. They spoke an Algonquin language. Honestly, one of these days we have to talk about Native American history more, but I'm going to have to do some studying, and the sources are not very consistent. It's really hard to research Native American history, and I think that's quite a shame.

Joe: So in specific, this peninsula between those rivers, it seems to be something of a border region, right, between the territory of the Kennebec tribe, who were more inland, and the Penobscot people further east. So I have a map for you, Abram.

Joe: Again, I want to be a little careful. I could be making some mistakes about the Native American history, and if I am, I apologize. But if it was something of a remote region, that's probably why it was a good location for English settlement. So let's set the stage for that.

Joe: English settlement of the New World, obviously it didn't start with Jamestown, but in Newfoundland. John Cabot entered the harbor of what would become St. John's in 1497. From that point, very far east of here, English fishermen gradually extended westward in their voyages into the territory that would eventually become Maine. These fishing excursions, well, they're less documented than the voyages of exploration or colonization. And frankly, the fishermen benefited from not telling their neighbors where the best places to catch cod were. But it is believed that English fishermen made it this far west relatively early.

Joe: In 1604, the French tried to establish a colony on Saint Croix Island, which is today on the border between Maine and New Brunswick. That colony only lasted a year, but the important thing is that the French are going to claim the territory all the way to where we are, to the Kennebec River, and they're going to call this territory Acadia. So the French say this is theirs. You can see right now that France is pretty much always in the Enemies column of our little board game, right?

Abram: So, well, actually, Spain's always there.

Joe: That's true. Both France and Spain because they are, of course, colonial powers and competition. But the important thing is the British didn't recognize the French claim, and most of the French settlers were far east in what is now like New Brunswick.

Joe: So in 1607, on the mouth of the Kennebec River, which we're quite close to here, the English are going to start something called the Popham Colony. It was founded by the Plymouth Company before their more famous colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, but it only lasted fourteen months. But it's mostly famous for the colonists building the first ship in the New World, getting on it, and then immediately sailing back to England.

Joe: That's not quite the end of the story. When John Smith of Pocahontas fame returned in 1614, he found that there were still British fishermen in the area. He and the explorers that came after established a base of operations at Pemaquid, which is about ten miles south of here, as a place to trade, fish, and, well, even settle.

Joe: Historian David Cushman, writing in the 1800s, explained that these were a, quote, "different class" of people than settled at Plymouth. They were farmers and laborers, less interested in writing down what they were doing than they were in just catching fish and making money. Some of them even, quote, "left their country for their country's own good." So this is the historian trying to say that maybe they were criminals.

Joe: But by 1622, these loosely affiliated, rugged people had established three towns in the area: Pemaquid, Arrowsic, and Sheepscot. Pemaquid is going to become Bristol, and Sheepscot is going to become Newcastle. That's where we are.

Abram: And one of them either stays the same or gets destroyed.

Joe: And Arrowsic, they never changed the name. It's still there.

Joe: So Sheepscot was well established enough that the Plymouth Colony sent a message to them, the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, only two years after their colony was founded, asking, could you please send some supplies? We're running a little low. Some supplies were provided. So we have to assume that the Sheepscot town was established enough and well-known enough and farming enough that they were able to have provisions that they could share.

Joe: By 1630, there were eighty-four families spread across these three villages. And Cushman writes that they did not have a common government. They were just self-sufficient little communities on the very edge of English territory, surrounded by cold winters, Native Americans, and, well, the French. There also apparently was a Dutch colony that tried to settle here in 1607, but they were unsuccessful, and some of the Dutch people apparently stayed around and might have settled with them.

Joe: In 1652, someone decided that these British colonial squatters should purchase the land off their local tribes. They made a deal with three local sachems. But I was reading this and I'm a little suspicious. So the names of the sachems are a little strange. Robin Hood, Dick Swash, and Jack Pudding.

Abram: I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm laughing.

Joe: I think that is a very reasonable response.

Abram: But isn't it being disrespectful to laugh?

Joe: Well, the thing is, I'm not sure that those — I mean, they certainly weren't their real names. Like, I don't know whether they were given those names as a sign of disrespect. I don't know whether they were given those names because they chose them. I don't know. But in 1652, they bought the territory off of Robin Hood, Dick Swash, and Jack Pudding, and I can't explain it either. Quite frankly, it all could have been a lie. They could have made it up, this claim that they had a legitimate claim to the territory, and maybe they didn't.

Joe: So unfortunately, their rugged individualism had to come to an end on March 12th, 1664. Who was king then?

Abram: Charles II.

Joe: King Charles II had just taken over the Dutch possessions that would become New York. As he examined his map, he realized that there was no charter given to the territory west of Saint Croix. So he realized, wait, I have some towns there, but no one owns them. So he granted all of that land to his brother, the Duke of York, who you will know better as King James II.

Abram: And VII.

Joe: And VII.

Abram: Remember, he is James II and VII. A lot of people just think that after James VI and I, or I and VI, that there weren't any other cross names. And since James II isn't that famous of a king — he's more famous than Charles II but less famous than like William and Mary — they just assumed that he was only James II. If they didn't know he was, but he's actually James II and VII because of Scotland.

Joe: True.

Abram: Isn't that sort of a forgotten fact?

Joe: I think that is a forgotten fact. But another forgotten fact is that that's how New York got its name.

Abram: New York is named for James the Duke of York, later known as James II and VII.

Joe: Correct.

Abram: Mostly James II though.

Joe: So the English named this the Sagadahoc Territory, but different sources I read claim that that was hard to pronounce, so some people called it Cornwall. Apparently on one map it was even called Newcastle, which kind of puts my whole talking about it now to shame. But that source says, well, that was a mistake. Actually, they meant Newcastle in what is now Delaware. So phew, we can still have a conversation about Newcastle here.

Abram: This is probably the most interesting town segment so far already.

Joe: I'm so glad. So the Duke of York appointed four commissioners to travel to New York and Sagadahoc to organize the territory, to establish laws and courts, and to make it into a governed province. The leadership would be in New York instead of Massachusetts. So think about that for a second, even though the Massachusetts colony was a lot closer. And then they renamed Sheepscot to Dartmouth. But don't worry, it's still going to be Newcastle eventually.

Abram: Did they rename the other one yet?

Joe: They did rename the other one, but it's about to get really difficult, so the names aren't going to matter much.

Joe: In 1675, there was a war called King Philip's War. This is a war of Native American tribes trying to reclaim territory that was taken from them and to basically push back on British expansionism. The war started around Plymouth but spread throughout New England, and in August of 1676, the war reached Sheepscot. Many of the settlers fled to a fort at Cape Newaggan, but 260 settlers were killed. 150 settlers were taken prisoner. All of the settlements in this area, including Sheepscot, which would eventually become Newcastle, were burned to the ground.

Joe: Six years later, York, still a duke, arranged for the resettlement of the area. The former occupants were told that anyone that wanted to come back, they had a year to do so. Otherwise, the property would be forfeit. So some people came back.

Abram: Did they refound all three towns?

Joe: Well, by that point, there was probably more than just the three. But the point is that King Philip's War pretty much flattened all of the towns and settlements in this area.

Abram: Before 1675, about?

Joe: By 1676, yes. So a little bit more of American colonial history you might not know. 1686, all the northern —

Abram: And by the way, guess who the king is now?

Joe: Who?

Abram: James II and VII. I feel like he's the main character of the story right now.

Joe: Yep. So in 1686, almost all of the northeastern colonies in the New World were joined together into something called the Dominion of New England. So this is New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Maine — although it wasn't called Maine yet — New Jersey, and others are combined into this giant ungovernable supercolony led by Sir Edmund Andros. So it lasts for three years, and pretty much everyone hates it. Even then, Boston and New York could not get along. Can you believe it?

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Of course, you know what happened in 1688, right?

Abram: James II and VII abdicated and I think fled to France.

Joe: Happened. William and Mary came to the throne.

Abram: As king now, and queen now. Mary II and William III.

Joe: Yes. So here's a bit that we really didn't cover. But when William and Mary came to the throne, the Dutch Republic — remember that William of Orange was part of the Dutch Republic, or at least had Dutch territory — was already at war with the French. So as soon as they were on the throne, England entered the war on the side of the Dutch, because when does England ever shy away from fighting with the French, right?

Joe: We don't have our board here set up for 1688, but we could show it. In Europe, this conflict is called the Nine Years' War, but in the colonies, it's going to be called King William's War. After King William III.

Abram: And what about Mary? Why isn't she in the name?

Joe: I don't know. I didn't name it.

Joe: So basically, the French are going to fight the English possessions in the New World with the help of Native Americans, kind of like what's going to happen next episode with the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War.

Abram: And will we have the Native Americans get a thing in that one as well?

Joe: Yeah, well, we'll try to figure out how to give them a thing.

Abram: I feel like every time we're going to add like three or four new ones. These are just the originals.

Joe: Yeah. So on September 6th, 1688, Sheepscot was destroyed again. And even after that war ended, resettling this border region with French Acadia, that was a dangerous thing to do.

Abram: But were all three towns destroyed again?

Joe: Everything was pretty much destroyed again, at least the towns right near where we are.

Joe: They attempted to resettle again in 1719, which led to yet another war called Dummer's War, which lasted from 1722 to 1725. In short, colonization up here was going to be pretty tough.

Joe: But by 1729, a guy named Colonel David Dunbar, he's going to come to Maine. He's going to secure the land as timberland for the British Navy. He named three settlements that he founded, or maybe he just found, maybe he just recognized, I don't know, but he named them Harrington, Walpole, and Townshend.

Abram: Wait a second, there was a Walpole.

Joe: There is a Walpole here. It's actually a village, not a town now, but we could have come here for one of our Walpole episodes. There's also a Bath, Maine, not too far from here. I don't know if it's related.

Joe: So there's not that much more to say. By the 1730s, there were people in Sheepscot again. One source says that Colonel Dunbar called this Newcastle in honor of Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle. But whether it was called that then or later, it was first officially called Newcastle in 1753.

Abram: And what happened to the other two original towns?

Joe: There are other towns around here. They have different names. I think I'd have to look up the history of those.

Abram: Didn't you say one of them didn't get renamed or something?

Joe: Well, Arrowsic is still here.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: And the other one, I think, is now Bristol, if I remember right. So in any event, 1753, the settlement officially takes on the Duke's name.

Abram: Then was Arrowsic destroyed all the times as well?

Joe: I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure it was destroyed each time.

Abram: But they just renamed it the same thing it was before instead of changing the name like five times.

Joe: As best as I understand. I can look this up for you later.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: So why was it a district and not a town? Well, it could be that districts did not get representatives in the Massachusetts General Assembly. I forgot to mention that when the Dominion of New England was broken up, Massachusetts got control of this area, which is now Maine. And you can see that on that map right there, as opposed to New York. So Massachusetts will promote it to a town in 1775. And that's the colonial story of Newcastle, Maine.

Joe: While we were busy, Henry Pelham started to feel a little ill. I hope he's okay.

Prime Minister

Joe: But unfortunately, we know where this leads. On March 6th, 1754, Henry Pelham dies after a long illness. I don't really know what it can be like to have your younger brother die, let alone someone that was as important to Thomas as his brother Henry was to him.

Joe: Thomas went immediately into mourning. He left all of his official duties to his good friend Lord Hardwicke. He's the guy that's going to be the prime minister maker this time. So he's negotiating with George II and others for who could take over after Henry. Thomas Pelham-Holles largely stayed out of these discussions because he was in mourning, right? He needed to step away.

Joe: So Lord Hardwicke first offers the role to William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, but he turns it down.

Abram: We'll come back to that later.

Joe: Thomas Pelham-Holles really had wanted to remain as Secretary of State under the next administration, but he was convinced that his only option was to take up the reins of First Lord of the Treasury for his brother.

Joe: I find it tremendously ironic that a man who literally cannot manage his own money could be given the keys to the entire Treasury of England. But in March 1754, he accepts the role as First Lord of the Treasury. We now consider that to be the fourth prime minister, and we'll have to wait until next time to see how that ends up.

Joe: Abram, did you have fun today?

Abram: Yep.

Joe: I had a lot of fun with him. He is an interesting, quirky guy that — never know what to expect.

Abram: Yep.

Joe: So Abram, before you take off your headset, don't forget to like and subscribe and to give us reviews. We look forward to giving you the next episode very soon. Say goodbye, Abram.

Abram: Bye.

Bibliography

Joe: My primary source material this week is *The Duke of Newcastle* by Reed Browning, copyright 1975. This was augmented with material from *Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle: His Early Political Career* by Stebbleton H. Nulle, 1931. In addition is our usual collection of chapter-length biographies by Dick Leonard and Robert J. Parker.

Joe: The history of Newcastle, Maine was primarily sourced from *A History of Ancient Sheepscot and Newcastle*, written by David Quimby Cushman in 1882. In all cases, other sources were consulted for contributing details on individual events.

Joe: I'm indebted to Tim Dinsmore, president of the Newcastle Historical Society, for his review of my Newcastle, Maine material. Any errors are my own. Thanks also to Emma McKearney for coming in on her day off to let us record in the Newcastle community room.

Joe: And finally, our editor is Samuel Cunningham. You can find him at samc_productions on Fiverr. He does great work.

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