Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

7.2 - George Grenville (Part 2)

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7.2 - George Grenville (Part 2)

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, George Grenville, Part Two.

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. This episode is 7, George Grenville, Part Two. Shouldn't it be 7.2, George Grenville?

Joe: Yeah, it should be 7.2, George Grenville, Part Two. Well, Abram, I know I promised you Quebec, but we didn't make it to Quebec.

Abram: No!

Joe: The logistics of taking a kid over the border with only one parent, plus our upcoming special episode at an undisclosed location, made crossing into Canada a little too difficult, and I didn't want to wait till May. I hope we can go back later, maybe to Addington, Ontario, because there's a Prime Minister named that. Don't you know it?

Abram: Yeah. So we went back to where we started and are back in the Stone Room at Walpole Library. So we record on location for the first time.

Joe: Yeah. I hope this time the microphones work better. Not everything worked well in here the last time we were here.

Abram: Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at www.primefactorspodcast.com. We're also on Facebook and Bluesky. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review.

Joe: We mean that sincerely. We'd love for you to spread the word if you know other podcast listeners who would enjoy our adventure. You know that we're serious about history, but you know, we're not the most serious podcast. Please recommend us. Please write a review. It would really help us to get the message out.

Joe: And Abram, we have a promo this week. We'd like to recommend Kingdom: Swedish Rulers. It's a new podcast from the makers of Flatpack History of Sweden. They're on the Podcaster Discord where I met them. They are reviewing all the rulers of Sweden from Olof Skötkonung to Carl XVI Gustaf. They're the newest member of the Rexipod Club, although their hosts have been around for a while. Let's check them out.

Abram: We're one of the newest Rexipods. Worlds is the smallest official one, right? These guys might be smaller, but we're the smallest by combined total of all the hosts.

Joe: I think we've been around for a year, so we're not the newest anymore, but we're still pretty new.

[PROMO]

Chris: Hello there. This is Chris and Orsa from one of the newest Rexipods, Kingdom: Swedish Rulers.

Orsa: We're the Brit and the Swede that's judging and ranking all of the Swedish kings, queens, and regents from Olof Skötkonung to Carl XVI Gustaf.

Chris: We run through our categories like Stormakt, investigating how good at battle or political plotting our rulers were, or Swedish Sin, where we look into the more outrageous side of Swedish royal life, before seeing if our rulers are worthy of being awarded the Three Crowns, that famous symbol of Sweden.

Orsa: Or if they should be mushed into a meatball. We do all this every other Sunday wherever you find your podcasts, in the weeks between releases of our other podcast, A Flatpack History of Sweden, where we chronologically look at the broader narrative of Swedish history.

Chris: We'd love to have you with us on our journey, seeing as you already have excellent taste in podcasts. Indeed you do, so we'll see you there.

[END PROMO]

Joe: I think it's great that it's another Rexipod where the loser gets to be food or has something to do with food.

Abram: Ours, they don't exactly turn into wine. Well, they kind of do. They turn into a part of food.

Joe: An ice cream cone. But they get Swedish meatballs.

Abram: Ugh.

Joe: Yuck. Abram, are you ready to go for our podcast?

Abram: We just started. I'm not ready to go yet.

Joe: Are you ready to start finishing Grenville?

Picture This

Joe: Close your eyes or don't. You don't have to, especially if you're driving.

Abram: I wouldn't recommend closing your eyes if you're driving.

Joe: Imagine yourself in modern downtown Boston. We're standing outside the Chinatown station on the MBTA Orange Line, although the once thriving Chinatown—

Abram: Stop, stop, stop. You did this already. Don't you remember?

Joe: Oh, right. I used Grenville's second Picture This for the Stamp Act special.

Abram: We did plan to use it for Grenville's second Picture This.

Joe: We did, we did. So I gotta come up with something else. Okay, got it. It's July 1763. We're not in Boston anymore, but we're deep in the North American wilderness. We're standing in a fort where the mighty Monongahela and Allegheny rivers converge to form the Ohio.

Abram: Dad, seriously? Pittsburgh again?

Joe: It's important to George Grenville's story.

Abram: I don't believe you. You're just doing this because you want to record William Pitt in Pittsfield, aren't you?

Joe: Oh, because I want to record William Pitt—

Abram: Oh, because I want to record William Pitt in Pittsfield, aren't you?

Joe: No, of course not. But—

Abram: Dun dun dun.

Joe: Let's get back to our story. You're right. This is Fort Pitt, but it was called Fort Duquesne the last time we were here.

Abram: Not Fort Duquesne.

Joe: This is near where George Washington lost in a skirmish with the French at the start of the Seven Years' War.

Abram: Ugh, that guy again. He'll never become popular.

Joe: And the fort that General Braddock failed to capture from the French. But the French fleur-de-lis has been replaced now with the Union Jack. And it's garrisoned by British troops watching and protecting the western frontier.

Joe: But these aren't normal times. Men, women, and children mingle with the soldiers behind the wall as sentries armed with muskets patrol the battlements. The fort is under siege. On the tip of the triangle that will one day be Point State Park, they have plenty of fish to catch and water to drink, but all the ways east are guarded by the Delaware, the Mingo, and a half dozen other tribes who have come together to punish the British.

Joe: The houses outside the wall that had been used by trappers and traders, farmers and settlers lay empty as everyone fled into the refuge of the star-shaped fort. But suddenly a mounted messenger appears on the road and is quickly let in. He and his horse were exhausted, but he cleared the blockade. An arrow stuck into his saddle is a very near reminder of how close he came to death.

Joe: Captain Simeon Ecuyer, the garrison commander, comes out to greet the messenger. "Do you have news? How far away is Colonel Bouquet now?"

Joe: Ecuyer speaks with a Swiss-French accent. He's a mercenary like so many of the British forces in the area. Even the colonel that he hopes to relieve him is Swiss. But I'm not going to try, Abram, to do a Swiss-French accent, so you're just going to have to imagine it.

Joe: The messenger pants. "Days yet, perhaps weeks. Detroit has not yet fallen, but Sandusky and our other forts on Lake Erie—they've fallen already." Let me show you the map, Abram.

Abram: Show me the map.

Joe: So this, Abram, is a map of a war that you may not have heard of. This is called Pontiac's War.

Abram: What's that?

Joe: This is a war that was fought in 1763.

Abram: Wait, there's a fort called Fort Michilimackinac.

Joe: There's a lot of forts, but in 1763, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, a bunch of Native Americans decided that they weren't so happy with the British, and that they are going to be attacking all of the British forts in sort of the western part of British North America. Fort Pitt is where Pittsburgh is, and Fort Detroit, you can probably guess where that is.

Abram: Detroit.

Joe: But the Native Americans were really defeating a lot of the British forts.

Joe: Ecuyer looks at his tiny garrison and the families within his protective walls. There are nowhere near enough troops, even with the Swiss mercenaries, to secure the peace.

Joe: But we zoom out now, leaving behind western Pennsylvania and returning once again to Westminster at 10 Downing Street. Although, as we discussed last time, it was still numbered 5 for another decade yet. Please learn more by listening to our episode on Larry the Cat.

Joe: It's a few weeks later, and inside we see George Grenville in his study reading the war reports and the harrowing story of the near capture of Fort Pitt. Reading the reports, he pauses to do some difficult calculations before scrawling a number on a nearby chalkboard: 224,903 pounds. He holds his head in his hands as we fade to black. That number is going to be very important later in our episode.

Abram: I'll ask you to raise it again. 224,903.

Joe: 224,903. 224,903.

Abram: The most important number of the episode, see? 224,903.

Joe: All right, we're going to leave Grenville and the secret behind that mysterious number for a few minutes.

Recap

Joe: Abram, what do you remember about George Grenville?

Abram: Not much.

Joe: Not much. All right.

Abram: We spent too much time on special episodes, Dad.

Joe: Okay, let me remind you.

Abram: This is your punishment.

Joe: Let me remind you. So George Grenville was the second son of Richard and Hester. Richard Grenville, Hester Temple, part of a powerful local family that was making it big thanks to his Uncle Cobham.

Abram: Oh yeah, the Cobham guys.

Joe: George wanted to be a lawyer, but he was brought to Parliament as one of Cobham's Cubs when Uncle Cobham fought against Robert Walpole as an opposition Whig faction.

Abram: So this does have something to do with Walpole.

Joe: It does. George rose gradually through the ranks, supported by his brother, who would eventually be Richard Grenville-Temple, or the Lord Temple, and eventually his brother-in-law, William Pitt, William Pitt the Elder. But though he supported his family, he was always the junior partner, never getting the best jobs or the cushiest patronage. Pitt alternating between loving and backstabbing him every few years.

Joe: But as we approach 1761, remember, George Grenville faced a difficult choice. Should he remain part of his cousinhood of the Grenville-Temple-Pitt-Lyttelton faction, or should he go into opposition with his new friend, Lord Bute?

Abram: He went into opposition.

Joe: And that's where we ended.

Abram: With Lord Bute.

Joe: George Grenville sided with Lord Bute and George III against the Grenville-Temple faction. His brother Richard is the leader of the opposition. And the once united family is now divided. Will betraying his family, Abram, be the right choice? We're gonna have to decide in a bit.

Abram: Yep, and this is right where the Picture This from last episode falls. It's crazy how the Picture This from last episode also appears in this episode.

Joe: Well, it is part of the same biography.

The Final Days of Prime Minister Newcastle

Joe: With Grenville as the leader of the House of Commons—so that was the deal with Bute, remember? That if he betrays his brother, we'll make you the leader of the House of Commons. But his first task was to neutralize all the threats he could. And there are two very important threats in the House of Commons. Henry Fox.

Abram: The Fox, okay.

Joe: And William Pitt the Elder.

Abram: So there's Pitt the Elder and that Fox.

Joe: Pitt was especially upset with Grenville because he broke up his cousinhood. But as you remember, Pitt would break up the cousinhood all the time, so I think he's a hypocrite.

Joe: And George dealt with them in a typical Whig fashion: bribery. So neither man could or would accept a peerage that would take him out of the House of Commons. But Grenville was able to give special peerages to their wives. Henry Fox's wife was made the Baroness Holland, while Pitt's wife became the Baroness Chatham. That means that their children would be nobles even if they weren't. But as you'll find out, they're eventually going to get peerages in their own right anyway.

Joe: At around the same time, George Grenville gave his younger brother Henry—he made him an ambassador or a diplomat in Constantinople, and that was going to keep him out of his hair for a bit as well.

Joe: Although George joined the government to support Lord Bute, they actually started disagreeing almost immediately, especially over the Treaty of Paris. Bute was concerned that Grenville wasn't going to fight hard enough. And guess what? Bute betrayed him.

Abram: Dun dun dun!

Joe: Almost immediately. Like, Bute brought him in, and by April 1762, Bute said, "Oh, actually, never mind. Henry Fox is going to run the Commons, and I'm going to make you the First Lord of the Admiralty. I hope that's okay."

Abram: But, but— No buts.

Joe: George was really qualified. Remember that he was already on the Admiralty Board. His brother Thomas had died in the Navy. But for him to lose the job that he just backstabbed his family for, that probably hurt.

Joe: It turned out basically to be a non-issue because before it all could be finalized, a scandal broke out in the Treasury Department. Thomas Pelham-Holles discovered that there was a spy in the Treasury, a guy named Samuel Martin, who theoretically worked for Newcastle, but every message that was supposed to go to Thomas Pelham-Holles, he would copy and give copies to Bute and Grenville.

Joe: Thomas Pelham-Holles was so upset about this, he said, "My remaining in the Treasury to be baited and overruled by Mr. Grenville would be of no service to the public and very disagreeable to myself. Mr. Grenville and I cannot jointly have conduct of the Treasury." In other words, I quit.

Joe: By May 6th, Newcastle was out, and as we know, John Stuart, the Earl of Bute, was the next Prime Minister. The plan to put Grenville on the Admiralty Board was put on hold for a while because now he was gonna get a newer, even bigger job—Secretary of State, or the Northern Secretary.

A New Cousinhood

Joe: In the mad shuffle, Abram, where Newcastle was leaving and Bute was coming in, remember there was a lot of stuff that was happening and not everything quite worked.

Abram: What? I'm doing a mad shuffle.

Joe: That's, that's fine. But almost all of them had one thing in common: Bute tried to support Grenville, but Grenville wasn't always the most appreciative. In fact, he was a bit of a pain.

Joe: One early idea was that Bute might not have become Prime Minister at all, but made George Grenville Prime Minister. That didn't happen. He offered Grenville to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. That didn't happen. Grenville really wanted to be the Northern Secretary, but he couldn't be because his brother-in-law, Lord Egremont, was already the Southern Secretary, and George III really didn't want to have two brothers being the Northern Secretary and the Southern.

Joe: But George was trying to start his new cousinhood. This way, the two brothers-in-law would control all of Britain's foreign policy.

Abram: Wait, did he rejoin the Cobham guys?

Joe: No, this is his brother-in-law Egremont from his sister's marriage. He's basically trying to start a new cousinhood with some other relations.

Abram: No Cobham guys?

Joe: None of the Cobham guys. So in any event, George didn't want it—but after a lot of negotiation, somehow—and I really imagine stamping his feet—George Grenville got it. That unfortunately really upset John Stuart, who again was already upset because of the Treaty of Paris stuff. They just get upset with each other a lot.

Abram: You could call them rivals.

Joe: Yeah. One of the jobs that he had as Northern Secretary was policing the newspapers of the day, and most of the factions had their own newspapers. So William Pitt's followers had The Monitor. Lord Bute's faction—

Abram: What happened to, like, Pulteney's newest thing?

Joe: Pulteney's was The Craftsman, and that actually closed a couple of years before this.

Joe: In February 1762, Richard Grenville-Temple, George's brother, started his own newspaper called The North Briton, or he funded it at least. And we've mentioned this before. The North Briton was published by a guy named John Wilkes, who had, with Temple's help, been elected to Parliament in 1757. The paper was written as if it was a Scotsman pointing out the great things that his fellow Scotsman Lord Bute was doing. But of course, it was written by English people and very racist and all just very tongue-in-cheek.

Joe: But Grenville didn't know that his brother was paying for this newspaper. In fact, he didn't know he's probably even writing this newspaper. He just knew that there was a new newspaper that was making fun of his boss. He threatened to arrest the printer if he didn't spill the beans, not knowing that. And the printer said, quote, "Rather than go to prison, I will confess: the author of it is Earl Temple."

Abram: Dun dun dun!

Joe: Grenville was shocked that his brother was behind the hated paper, but it also meant that the paper was untouchable. Lord Temple was super rich, had so many connections. He was George's elder brother, and going against him, he knew, would be suicide. So George dropped the investigation. But Richard did stop writing for the paper himself about that time, so maybe he saw that it was a little dangerous.

Joe: Although he only had the role for a few months, George and Bute were still fighting about the Treaty of Paris. Bute wanted to give concessions and Grenville didn't. They had a big fight over whether or not Britain should keep St. Lucia. Do you know where St. Lucia is?

Abram: It's basically a country in the southern part of the Caribbean near Martinique, which is part of France, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Barbados, and a few other islands.

Joe: And then Bute fired Grenville as the Northern Secretary and finally gave him that long-promised First Lord of the Admiralty job. It was a massive demotion. He got a pay cut going from £9,000 a year to £2,500, or like $3 million a year to $800,000.

Joe: Grenville considered quitting at this point and joining the opposition, but with his family fractured, there was nowhere to go, no one to pay his bills, and he couldn't fall on his brother's money.

Joe: So, in order to soften the blow, Bute told George that he planned to resign once the treaty was signed, and that maybe he would support George's bid to be Prime Minister. This might have been a complete lie. Of course, it turned out to have a little bit of truth.

The Gentle Shepherd

Joe: Grenville's time at the Admiralty Board, well, it went well because he was good at it. He knew plenty about naval affairs. There weren't any scandals. So instead, we're gonna spend most of our episode focusing on two other topics: censorship and taxes. Or most of this section.

Joe: Grenville didn't have much to do with this, but the new Northern Secretary was Halifax, and he continued prosecuting the North Briton, his brother's newspaper. Halifax at the time used a very controversial method called a general warrant.

Joe: So usually when you arrest someone, Abram, you need to know who you're arresting. You need to go to a judge and say, I need an arrest warrant for this person. But here the British government said they had writing on a piece of paper that they could arrest anyone associated with this opposition paper, including Pitt's Monitor and Temple's North Briton. So Grenville might have been reluctant to go after his brother, but Halifax was not.

Joe: At the Monitor, both writers were found and thrown in prison, but they were never charged. It was just to scare them. But at the North Briton, they were less successful. The paper's printers quit, but Temple had hid the evidence that he was involved very well.

Joe: At this point, it was a little bit of an open secret because we think George Grenville knew, and in fact, they revoked Richard's Lord Lieutenancies and other honorary roles, but he remained free and continued to publish articles against the Bute government.

Joe: But on February 10th, 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed. And with peace achieved, Bute was focused next on how to pay for the debt of the war. So remember from last time, Bute signed the treaty, now it's really expensive.

Joe: And the only tax that Bute managed to pass during his term was the Cider Tax, and we already talked about that, so we don't need to talk too much. But what we didn't talk about was the incredible House of Commons fight between Grenville and Pitt about this. Not a real fight, but, you know, an argument in Parliament. Grenville was arguing for the Cider Tax, Pitt was arguing against it. Grenville said they only needed it because Pitt spent too much money.

Abram: Spoiler alert: Grenville likes taxes.

Joe: Oh, we're going to talk about his taxes so much. Yep. Pitt said, no, don't tax cider, tax something else. If not cider, Grenville said, what could they tax? And George Grenville famously said, "Tell me where. I repeat it, sir, tell me where."

Abram: You didn't even tell me what. How do I know what to tell you where if I don't even know what?

Joe: Well, he was saying, "Pitt, if you don't want to tax cider, just tell me what to tax and I will tax it. But we have to tax something. Tell me where."

Joe: And in reply, William Pitt either sung or hummed a popular song of the day. And we have a special guest: John from Prime Time.

Abram: Does he have any marquises and viscounts?

Joe: He did not give us any marquises and viscounts today, but he did give us this.

John: Tell me, lovely shepherd, where? Tell me where thou feed'st at noon thy fleecy care. Direct me to the sweet retreat that guards thee from the midday heat.

Abram: And from now on, he'll have to voice at least the singing voice of Pitt.

Joe: I think we can do that. Oh wait, there might be Pitt in the Picture This next episode, so we have to get him to agree to that.

Abram: We'll have to get him to voice Pitt because, well, he does voice Pitt.

Joe: Yes. Honestly, this is like the 1700s equivalent of them singing, like, probably like Bohemian Rhapsody or something. But the point is Pitt was making fun of his "tell me where, tell me where" by singing a song at him. And from then on, George Grenville got the nickname "Gentle Shepherd" in Parliament. So when you go against an orator like William Pitt, you're gonna lose. But the Cider Bill was ultimately passed.

Joe: Bute became increasingly uncomfortable by how unpopular he was, and then he essentially resigned as Prime Minister. Bute proposed that Henry Fox should lead the next government, but Fox was sick at the time and felt that he couldn't do it, so they needed to find someone else.

Joe: They didn't want George. In fact, I think Bute said of him—although this might have been George III—"George Grenville is and will be, whether in the ministry or the House of Commons, a hindrance and not a help, and sometimes a very great inconvenience to those he has joined with. He is a man of weak understanding."

Joe: They looked everywhere to find anybody that they could make Prime Minister. It's like, "Will you be Prime Minister? Will you be Prime Minister?"

Abram: Hey, I'm just a random farmer. Why are you asking me?

Joe: They looked at Waldegrave again. They looked at Halifax and Northumberland, but in the end, the only person that they could find that they thought could do the job was George Grenville. Wah, wah, wah. And anybody else, they thought that if they gave them the job, it was just gonna give more power to Pitt, and nobody wanted to give power to Pitt.

Abram: Because then everyone would be following him.

Joe: It wasn't quite the way he expected, but on April 16th, 1763, George Grenville finally became Prime Minister.

Prime Minister

Joe: George Grenville has his dream. He is the First Lord of the Treasury.

Abram: But doesn't he have a dream every night? So what's so important about this specific dream?

Joe: George Grenville has spent his entire life being subordinate to his brother, subordinate to William Pitt, always the second man in charge. But here he is. He has climbed the ladder.

Abram: Closer to third.

Joe: True. He has climbed the ladder. He is the 7th Prime Minister, and he's only 51 years old. So clearly he's going to live for a while, right?

Abram: He's totally not going to die in the next 10 years.

Joe: Unfortunately, even though he had the high office, Bute was still pulling a lot of the strings behind the scenes. Grenville was not allowed to select his own cabinet. He said, quote, "I care not one farthing for these men I am now to be with."

Joe: His brother-in-law Egremont remained his Southern Secretary, so his new cousinhood stood. But his rival, Henry Fox, was made Paymaster of the Forces. And in order to make sure that Fox was not going to bother anyone in the Commons—you got to keep the fox out of the henhouse, right?

Abram: Yeah. I didn't know a fox could cause so much trouble.

Joe: Oh, we just read The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I wonder if it's—

Abram: I wonder if that fox is causing so much trouble because he thinks George Grenville's a farmer.

Joe: That's true.

Abram: And wait, George Grenville supported the cider.

Joe: It all fits. Roald Dahl was secretly talking about George Grenville and Henry Fox. We've got it.

Joe: But the point is that George Grenville made Henry Fox into Baron Holland so that now Fox is in the House of Lords and not in the House of Commons. Do you know who John Montagu is?

Abram: Is Montague in Massachusetts named after him? Probably.

Joe: Okay, but you might know him by a different name from Odd Squad.

Abram: Lord Sandwich.

Joe: Yes, he is the 4th Earl of Sandwich, and he's the new First Lord of the Admiralty. He's the guy that invented the sandwich, and he's going to have a really big role in the Wilkes affair.

Joe: One thing that Grenville did accomplish was to negotiate a £3,000 pension so that someday when he quits, he's still going to get $1 million a year just to be a former Prime Minister.

Joe: From here, Abram, this episode is going to go on two tracks. We're going to cover them one at a time. First, we're going to talk about John Wilkes and the North Briton, and that's one of the largest scandals in British history at the time, at least. And it's going to reshape the way Britain and then America sees the freedom of the press. Of course, as that paper was funded by Richard Temple, his brother, it was also a very personal issue to George.

Joe: And while this is going on, we have Pontiac's War, which we talked about, and the need to fund additional troops in North America, and the taxes that Grenville would need in order to solve that problem. So that's gonna be the second track.

Joe: Both are important to Grenville's prime ministership. Both are happening at the same time. But if I tell you them all in chronological order, we're just gonna go nuts. So we're gonna talk about Wilkes first, okay?

Wilkes Affair

Joe: When John Stuart left office, Wilkes actually stopped writing, at least temporarily. He stopped writing the North Briton. But as public opinion shifted against Grenville and that he was just a puppet of John Stuart, Wilkes started the paper back up. You know, given that George actually couldn't assemble his own cabinet or whatever because he hasn't shopped at IKEA.

Joe: So when George Grenville became Prime Minister, by the way, I forgot to mention that he had to run for his seat again. And his seat was—

Abram: I need a seat. What? No open seats.

Joe: Seats. Well, that was the worry. What if there wasn't an open seat? Of course, that seat is controlled by his brother Richard. He had to go to Richard to ask him for his help, and they hadn't really been talking.

Joe: And so we don't know exactly how this happened. But in order for Richard to support George in getting his seat again, George ended up giving his brother an early copy of the King's Speech, which was going to be used to open Parliament a couple of days later.

Joe: We don't know whether Richard asked for this, but Richard had it. And then who did he give that speech to but his good friend John Wilkes, who was writing the newspaper?

Abram: Oh, no.

Joe: So John Wilkes wrote a rebuttal to the speech even before it had been given. That allowed him to print an issue of the newspaper immediately after the king had finished talking. This is now what they call the infamous issue number 45.

Joe: To the modern ear, what he wrote wasn't so bad. He even started by saying that even though the king was saying the words, it was the minister's speech, not the king's speech. But he said, quote, "This week has given the public the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on mankind."

Joe: "The minister's speech of late Tuesday is not to be paralleled in the annals of the country. I am in doubt whether the imposition is greater on the sovereign or the nation. Every friend of his country must lament that a prince of so great and amicable qualities, who England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures and to the most unjustifiable public declarations from a throne ever renowned for truth, honor, and unsullied virtue."

Joe: He's basically saying that everything the king said is garbage, but the king is a great guy. It's not his fault that he's saying garbage. And mostly what it was doing was criticizing that they let the French off easy in the Treaty of Paris and blah, blah, blah. But he was criticizing words that had come out of the king's mouth.

Joe: So the king delivers the speech to open Parliament. And this was really, really dangerous. This put Grenville in a very difficult position. It was his brother's paper. And even if that wasn't well known, Grenville knew it. Grenville even knew that he was the one that leaked the copy of the speech to his brother.

Joe: He asked for some advice from, like, the Solicitor General and the Attorney General, and they recommended prosecution. They recommended, quote, that it is "a most infamous and seditious libel tending to inflame the minds and alienate the affections of the people from His Majesty and to incite them to traitorous insurrections against our government."

Joe: So once again, Halifax, who was Secretary of State, he signed a warrant for the arrest of everyone involved. Everyone involved. The printers, the publishers, the authors. It named no names, but the police would simply go and arrest anyone they could find. And within hours, 48 people connected to the paper had been arrested.

Joe: But they did not arrest Wilkes or Richard Temple. Wilkes was an MP, and that meant that he was protected in part by, you know, his station, right? I guess all rich people are kind of protected from prosecution, I guess. And they never found enough evidence to pin a crime on Richard.

Joe: But it took another three days to decide whether or not they could even arrest Wilkes. And then they decided, "Yes, yes, we're going to arrest him." But he was able to sneak a message out to Richard, Lord Temple, before he was taken out to the Tower of London.

Joe: And what follows is like courtroom drama, and I don't know how much that matters to you, but there was a writ of habeas corpus, and they were performing legal judo to try to keep him out of the Tower of London. The government responded by creating a better arrest warrant.

Joe: We don't know. But the question here is not about Wilkes, but is, was Grenville's government behaving like tyrants? They arrested 48 people involved in that issue. Were they in the right to be mass arresting people that disagreed with them?

Joe: The public really agreed with Wilkes, and London was rioting or ready to riot. Demonstrators chanted the phrase "Wilkes, Liberty, and Number 45" up and down the streets of London. The combination that it was a newspaper and a member of Parliament and the way that they did it made it very, very, very unpopular.

Joe: Meanwhile, Egremont was searching Wilkes's house to find any evidence that would tie Richard Grenville-Temple to the paper, but he didn't find anything.

Joe: Two weeks later, Wilkes was able to be released from the Tower of London because, you know, his status as an MP kind of gave him that privilege. He discovered that all of his books had been taken. He tried to get them back, didn't really succeed.

Joe: And at this point, Wilkes started publishing the paper in his basement because he couldn't find anyone else that was willing to risk their lives. But he refused to stop printing.

Stuff Dad Cannot Talk About

Joe: When they awaited trial, George Grenville had spies. He looked for anything else that he could pin on Wilkes, right? He really wanted Wilkes to go to jail for a long time.

Abram: Why? Why do you hate this Wilkes guy?

Joe: You know, I just don't get it. It doesn't seem that bad to us, but at the time they saw this as like a terrible affront against the government.

Joe: In July, they discovered what they were looking for: a poem privately written and distributed just to a few aristocratic friends. And the poem was called "Essay on Women."

Joe: Now, Abram, I cannot tell you what is in this poem. It has lots and lots of sex stuff. I was expecting it to be pretty mild, and maybe it was like talking about seeing a woman's ankles in public because it seems like something they would worry about in the 1760s. But no, even for today, it is really, really bad.

Joe: And if any of our listeners Google for it, be aware that there's a few tamer versions that were created and published later to take advantage of the fame of the poem and to make a few bucks. If you've managed to find the original, it's pretty bad.

Joe: So what is the poem? It was a parody of Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man," one of the most famous poems in the English language, which of course I've never heard because I clearly was a poor student.

Joe: And I'm going to quote a little bit of that original. "Awake, my St. John! Leave all meaner things to low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us, since life can little more supply than just to look about us and to die, expatiate free o'er all this scene of man, a mighty maze but not without a plan, a wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot, or garden tempting with forbidden fruit."

Joe: Basically, the poem is just about how amazing people are and how they're in the image of God. And what Wilkes wrote was an essay about how amazing women are for sex stuff and really dirty things.

Joe: By the way, when the poem starts, "Awake, my St. John," you know who it's talking about? Henry St. John, the Viscount Bolingbroke.

Abram: Which one?

Joe: Was he the one that fled to France?

Abram: I think so. So that guy. It's just that Henry IV is also known as Henry Bolingbroke, so—

Joe: That's true.

Abram: That's the reason why. And I felt like since there's a saint in there, someone from the late 1300s, early 1400s is more likely to have that title than someone from the 1700s.

Joe: Yeah, that's true. So Wilkes's version of that poem, instead of being written for Henry St. John, his version is written for a mistress of Lord Sandwich.

Abram: Lord Sandwich.

Joe: Bottom line is, that's all I can say. A trial was set to take place in Parliament on November 15th. Lord North—you might want to put a pin in him. "Hi, I'm Lord North." So Lord North was named as the prosecutor, and what follows was, well, a trap.

Joe: So after the King's Speech, the Commons debated whether parliamentary privilege would protect Wilkes, and that went late into the night, and Wilkes had to be there, and he had to speak, and it didn't finish till well into the next day. Like, they went all night. Pitt actually spoke in Wilkes's defense more than 40 times.

Joe: Eventually, Parliament did decide that the issue was sedition, and it ordered all copies to be burned. But they didn't actually decide whether Wilkes could be put on trial for it.

Joe: Meanwhile, Lord Sandwich—

Abram: Lord Sandwich—

Joe: —had a trap in the House of Lords. He brought out the very poem that I can't talk about. He read it in the House of Lords, and they used some loopholes to allow him to do that.

Joe: Keep in mind that Sandwich was a friend of Wilkes. He was in something called the Hellfire Club, where far worse things were done and discussed. And now he is reading this poem in the House of Lords and pretending to be scandalized.

Joe: Basically, the House of Lords says this is scandalous. Wilkes didn't even know this was happening because he was over in the other House of Parliament defending himself. And the House of Lords said, "Oh, we're gonna put you on trial in two days."

Joe: What if he's still on trial in the other place? Well, they worked it out, but it turns out it doesn't matter because outside of Parliament, a supporter of George III challenged Wilkes to a duel.

Joe: Ooh! Wilkes is shot in the stomach and has to be taken home to recover. The trial had to be put on hold so that he could rest.

Joe: Two weeks later, the Commons decide, you know, they're also gonna press charges. More riots break out, more "Wilkes and Liberty" being chanted in the streets of London. When the British government tries to burn all the copies of the paper, a mob comes and rescues them and actually burns effigies of George Grenville and John Stuart.

Abram: So the wrong thing got burned because the other people came in?

Joe: Yes. On December 16th, Wilkes was ordered to attend Parliament for his trial. But when the messenger arrived to take him, he's like, "Cough, cough. I am still too ill from my gunshot wound to attend Parliament today." Was he? No. In reality, he was feeling much better. And as soon as the messenger left, he snuck out of London, got a boat to France, and hid in Paris.

Abram: So why is everyone escaping to France?

Joe: I mean, France.

Abram: I guess France is the enemy.

Joe: Well, yeah, but that probably means it's a safe place to hide.

Abram: Even James II and VII fled to France. What's with everyone fleeing to France?

Joe: Well, anyone that goes to France can be sure the French government is not going to help the English get them back.

Joe: They were so upset about this that they did officially kick him out of Parliament. They had a trial without him. And by November 1764, when he still refused to return to London to face the trial in Parliament, he was made an outlaw, just like Robin Hood.

Joe: And that meant that if he ever stepped foot in England, somebody could shoot him or kill him or anything and get no punishment. He is outside of the law.

Joe: Wilkes is known as one of the lead fighters for press freedom. So for all that Grenville, right, is one of the most hated men in history, Wilkes is kind of a folk hero. Even if he had really bad taste in poetry. When he comes back and a couple of Prime Ministers—

Abram: He comes back?

Joe: He is going to come back, but we're not going to talk about all of that today.

Pontiac's War

Joe: Rewind, rewind, rewind. We're going back to the start of Grenville's time as Prime Minister, but this time we're in America. Britain has won the Seven Years' War, and all those Native American territories we spoke about—basically everything west of the Appalachians—didn't have many Europeans.

Abram: The Appalachians.

Joe: And they were defended by a series of forts, which I already showed you. There were only 500 troops across all of those forts, and that was not nearly enough to cover a lot of angry Native Americans.

Joe: The French had treated them pretty well. In fact, the French had bribed them, maybe, or maybe they had been culturally supportive by giving regular gifts to tribal chiefs. But the British either didn't want to or couldn't afford to give gifts to the tribal chiefs. They saw the natives as subjugated people. The natives saw it as insulting.

Joe: In May 1763, many Native American tribes around the Great Lakes region started attacking. They were led by an Odawa tribe member named Pontiac, and they first attacked Fort Detroit. But either because they were coordinated or because they all saw the opportunity, many other groups attacked many other forts at the same time.

Joe: In the first weeks of the war, eight forts were taken, including in modern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, western New York, and elsewhere. Two key forts did not fall, but they were laid under siege: Fort Detroit in what will eventually be Michigan, and Fort Pitt, which is in Pennsylvania, and of course named for William Pitt.

Joe: The important part of this story is what it meant to Grenville. He needed to defend the interior. Under John Stuart's plan, pretty much everything west of the Appalachians was supposed to be a protected Indian reservation, but colonists were already ignoring this rule. And for example, at Fort Pitt, we saw some houses because people are moving in even when they're not supposed to be.

Joe: By the way, that was part of Virginia at the time. Both Pennsylvania and Virginia had claimed that region, but Virginia was currently winning. It's now Pennsylvania, of course.

Joe: So he needed more than 500 troops, and that was going to cost money. And the amount of money that he calculated it was going to need, at least according to my source, was £224,903, or about $70 million today.

Joe: So with the national debt skyrocketing, he needed a way to pay for all of those troops that didn't cause a burden for the rest of Britain. So who should pay, Abram, for the defense of the British American territories?

Abram: Oh, I know, I know, the colonies!

Joe: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Absolutely correct. So Abram, we're going to do some math. I want you to write this number down: 224,903.

Abram: 224,903.

Joe: As we talk about different taxes, I'm going to ask you to subtract.

Abram: Okay. I have an idea.

Let's Tax The Colonists

Joe: Way back in Walpole's time, they had something called the Molasses Act of 1733. It's not important except to say that nobody cared. Smuggling pretty much all but ignored the tax. One estimate I read said it cost £8,000 to collect £2,000 a year. So it was worse than worthless.

Joe: But Grenville decided that his first job was to be to fix that. And so he created something called the Sugar Act to replace it. He would lower the tax. The Sugar Act's tax would be one-third of the Molasses Act tax. And he thought, hey, that's going to make people happy. But then he dramatically increased enforcement so that people couldn't smuggle to get around it.

Joe: He also made new rules so that if a smuggler was caught, they had to be tried in a British court or a British naval court, rather than allow an American court who might be sympathetic to smugglers to try them.

Joe: This new Sugar Act that he just invented was expected to bring in £78,000 per year. Abram, can you subtract £78,000 from that number?

Abram: Okay. What do you get?

Joe: £146,903.

Abram: Correct.

Joe: There were protests against the new Sugar Act, but on the whole, it went okay. But he still has a lot to go.

Joe: The next thing he passed is something called the Currency Act. That didn't raise taxes, but it banned the use of colonial money. So remember when we talked in our Stamp Act episode, different colonies had actually created their own paper money because they didn't have enough British money. Not anymore.

Abram: Not anymore.

Joe: That is now banned. Unfortunately, this had the impact that actually caused all the colonial governments to enter an economic recession. Not good.

Joe: The next attempt was something called the Stamp Act.

Abram: This one's the famous one.

Joe: This one's the famous one, and we're not going to talk about it in detail here. If you have not listened to our Stamp Act episode, please pause this, go listen to Stamp Act, and then resume.

Abram: And then resume.

Joe: Okay.

Abram: Okay, it's been about 30 minutes. Let's resume.

Joe: Eventually, the Stamp Act was expected to make about £100,000 per year. So can you subtract that?

Abram: Okay, what do you have left?

Joe: £46,903. £46,903. We're getting closer. Of course, in reality, the Stamp Act never made anywhere near that money because of the massive protests, the boycotts. So that was how much it was expected to make, not how much it actually did.

Abram: How much did it actually—

Joe: I don't know, I never found a number.

Joe: This is actually about the same time that the Wilkes protests are happening. Grenville currently has people really angry with him on both sides of the Atlantic.

Joe: While the colonists were concerned about taxation without representation, Grenville's government actually considered something that would have given them representation. The idea was that each colonial government could elect a single MP to the House of Commons that could only vote on bills related to the colonies.

Joe: However, this idea never made it past the early discussion stages, was never made it to a bill, never sent to a vote. But it is interesting, at least to me, that Grenville was at least sympathetic to the colonies' protests, but clearly not enough.

Joe: Grenville invited the colonial legislators to come up with their own taxes, a variation on "Tell Me Where" from the Gentle Shepherd song. But only Connecticut actually proposed something, and they proposed a tax on the slave trade, which Connecticut didn't do a lot of. So didn't really go anywhere, didn't make any money.

Joe: The final law that Grenville worked on was called the Quartering Act. So all those new British troops who were going to be there needed to stay somewhere, and they needed to pay for food and shelter.

Joe: So Grenville said, hey, you colonies, you can pay for all that yourself. All the colonies were commanded to build barracks for the British troops and to feed any British troops that were there. If they failed to build barracks or if they didn't build enough, they would be required by law to put people in inns or even in houses.

Joe: That was expected to save £80,000 per year, but was so unpopular that even two decades later, the United States is gonna say no to that in the Third Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. So that's how angry that bill was.

Abram: Do I subtract anything?

Joe: Yeah, go ahead and subtract 80,000.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Congratulations, Grenville. If your ideas had worked, you would have been very successful. Unfortunately, your ideas weren't that successful.

Abram: Sadly.

Meanwhile, In England

Joe: First and foremost, Grenville was becoming a lot less popular. He was seen as a tyrant for fighting the press. As soon as he got Wilkes arrested, he actually started going after other newspapers as well. He was also less popular with George III. He actually kept people from seeing George III unless they talked to him first.

Joe: Whenever he did speak to George, King George III complained about his boring lectures. He said, quote, "When he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he can weary me an hour more."

Abram: That's kind of funny, 'cause usually in school when you learn about them, you picture them as kind of like friends.

Joe: True. Do you know what I mean?

Abram: For any teachers out there, they are not friends. They just happen to have slightly similar ideas.

Joe: That's true. It is probably not surprising that in August 1763, George III wrote to the Earl of Bute and asked him to replace Grenville. Bute and George III started talking to Pitt, they started talking to Newcastle, but nobody would form a government. Pitt wanted too much power while Newcastle just said he was too old.

Joe: But they kept secretly looking for a replacement for Grenville. In fact, one of the possible replacements was maybe Pitt being a Secretary of State and Richard Grenville-Temple, his brother, being Prime Minister, and that would've been really cool because then we would've had two sets of brothers.

Joe: At the same time, unfortunately, Lord Egremont, his brother-in-law, died. And this gave Grenville some power because he could now choose a replacement.

Joe: But Grenville learned what was going on. He learned that John Stuart was plotting to replace him, and he snapped into action. He took a big risk. He knew that George III hadn't been able to find anyone yet to replace him. And so George said, "I have all the cards."

Joe: He confronted the King. Maybe because the King wasn't so good at direct conflict, and he basically said, "If you don't give me your full support, I will resign now. Moreover, you have to get rid of John Stuart."

Joe: The King gave up. The King said, "Yes, you can stay as Prime Minister." He pushed John Stuart into exile. Remember, there was that thing, supposedly, that he had to stay 30 miles away. The point is, George pushed his advantage with the King and was able to stay.

Joe: And who would replace Lord Egremont? Well, Lord Sandwich.

Abram: Lord Sandwich. Had he invented the sandwich?

Joe: I'm not sure. I think so.

Abram: So he's probably making a bunch of sandwiches during this talk. So I'm just imagining he's reading through all the things and he accidentally gets some meat on it and he's like, "Ugh, I should improve this new invention."

The Sadness of King George

Joe: It wasn't too long after this, when John Stuart was pushed out, that King George began to act depressed and withdrawn. He might be missing his friend, he might be sad that he wasn't able to contain George Grenville, it might be the mental health problems starting up.

Joe: But the next four months King George would alternate between seeming fine and just retiring to his room, refusing to interact or see anyone, including George Grenville. Publicly, the palace just said that the King had a cold. Some people in the press thought that he had tuberculosis, but whatever was going on was unclear.

Joe: We do know that Bute was allowed to visit him at least once again to check up on his friend. But with his mind in a dark place, King George requested to bring up a regency bill.

Joe: He basically said, "If I die, I want to decide who's going to take over until my son, Prince George"—who is only one at this point—"can take over." So he wanted a regency bill. He wanted it to be a secret. Basically, we will have a bill, but the people on it, I'm not going to tell you.

Joe: Bottom line is there was a big fight about this. George wanted to keep it secret, then they said it couldn't be secret. I don't need to go into details about this. George III obviously didn't die, but there was a lot of back and forth. People thought that he was going to use his regency bill as a way to bring Bute back, or his mother, into power.

Joe: But the big thing that this caused is that George III began to grow close to his uncle, Cumberland. Previously, they hated each other, but now, when he doesn't have any friends and Lord Bute is pulled away, he starts to become close to Cumberland.

Joe: And so, he started secretly working with Uncle Cumberland to form a ministry to replace Grenville. Cumberland started talking to Pitt again. He went to Temple. He tried to build a new cousinhood.

Joe: And on May 16th, George accidentally revealed—or admitted—to George Grenville that, you know what, I'm going to replace you.

Joe: So two days after this discussion, Richard, his brother, did something unexpected and reached out to George. And equally unexpectedly, George accepted his message. A flurry of discussions happened. But in a couple of days, George and his brother Richard were friends again. Yay!

Joe: It wasn't just a political union, but a family one. They started having dinners together with all their wives and their children, both Grenvilles and Pitt.

Joe: Maybe because George realized that he was on the way out, maybe because Richard realized that he might be getting a lot of power soon, maybe they just missed each other's company. But the bottom line is that George and Richard were very publicly reconciled, like even talked about in the papers, and they had these dinners very much in public.

Joe: While that is happening, Cumberland is still trying to replace George. There's some question as to whether he'll be kicked all the way out, or maybe he'll just become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But in the end, on July 10th, George III summoned Grenville to his palace at St. James's and officially removed him from office.

Joe: Because while Cumberland had been talking with Pitt and Temple, he was also talking to Newcastle. And while Newcastle said, "I'm too old," he said, "I have a friend that's not too old." Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham.

Abram: You'll probably remember from the episode. And now we'll play the clip.

[CLIP FROM PREVIOUS EPISODE]

Joe: June 30th, 1765. George III comes back and asks Newcastle for help. Okay, how old is Newcastle in 1765? 72. So he's too old now. He doesn't want the Treasury job, he just wants to be the elder statesman. So he takes an ally of his, Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquess of Rockingham, and he's made Prime Minister. Newcastle is going to get a job in the government called Lord Privy Seal. He doesn't have much to do. Watson-Wentworth is not going to support him as much as he expects, and he's not going to have as much control as he thought. But we'll get to that when we get to Rockingham's episode.

[END CLIP]

Joe: Charles Watson-Wentworth was selected as the next Prime Minister, basically being Newcastle without being Newcastle, and George Grenville was out of government after like less than a year. I think it was more than a year. I'll tell you how long in a minute.

Joe: So as George Grenville spoke to George III for the last time, he gave a piece of advice. He said, don't give up the American colonies. Anyone that lost America would be, quote, "a criminal and a betrayer of his country."

Abram: Like that's going to mean anything. It's not like they're going to revolt.

Life in Opposition

Joe: This is the part where we wrap up. George Grenville did not leave government right away. Instead, he simply returned to his cousinhood with Richard and William Pitt. The new Rockingham government was Newcastle II, and they fought against it.

Joe: As we'll talk about in his episode, the government will have its ups and downs. The Duke of Cumberland's gonna die only three months later, and in fact, at least one of the books I read said that Cumberland is the real Prime Minister for those three months. You can believe that or not.

Joe: George III briefly considered bringing George Grenville back, and when they discussed it, George said that he would do so only if the Stamp Act was not repealed.

Joe: But the key thing I need you to know right now about the Rockingham ministry is that almost everything Grenville did was undone. The Cider Act was repealed. The Sugar Act was repealed.

Abram: He didn't do the Cider Act.

Joe: No, that was Bute. The Stamp Act was repealed. The use of general warrants was stopped.

Joe: They did pass something called the Declaratory Act that will more than offset any goodwill they gained from the colonies. We're gonna talk about that next time.

Joe: In 1766, Pitt had another split with his cousins George and Richard, and he's gonna go into government with a guy named Augustus FitzRoy, the Duke of Grafton. They're gonna fight again, and when John Wilkes returns to London in 1768, George Grenville is actually gonna be one of his advocates.

Joe: For some reason, although he prosecuted him terribly when he was in power, now that Pitt is in power, he is going to be on Wilkes's side. I don't know how that happened, but I guess we'll talk about that when we get to FitzRoy.

Joe: George Grenville's wife died in 1769, and from there George started a gradual decline.

Joe: His last act in Parliament is a bill that he is very famous for. It is called the Grenville Act. This is a bill to reduce the corruption of Parliament. Essentially making it so that if one party controls Parliament, they cannot control when a seat is in question.

Joe: So if there is an election and you don't agree as to who won the election, now that decision will be made fairly instead of just by whichever party's in power. And so that's going to make it harder for people to cheat some of these elections. Walpole did a lot of this.

Abram: So if Walpole was here now, at that point, he probably wouldn't have been able to get into power so much.

Joe: Yeah, I mean, it was a tool that Walpole used, but he was not the only one.

Joe: On November 13th, 1770, George Grenville died. He was 58 years old. And after his brother's death a little bit later, Richard Temple, the Lord Temple, he also retired from politics.

Joe: While the cousinhood was over, of course, this is still one of the most important families in British political history. Both George's son William Grenville and William Pitt's son William Pitt the Younger, they're going to be Prime Ministers, as you know, and we're going to have a lot more stories about this family to go into before the end.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Epilogue: Grenville, Quebec

Joe: We didn't get to Grenville, but I want to talk about it anyway before we get on to the rating. While he was not loved as Prime Minister, George's reputation did improve at least somewhat with the passage of time, at least for non-Americans.

Joe: After the Seven Years' War, Abram, Britain controlled Quebec and then began the process of surveying and organizing their new territory. But they didn't get to that right away because they had so many debts and because the country was big and because of the American Revolution.

Joe: So let me introduce you to somebody named Samuel Gale. Gale had come from England prior to the Revolution. He worked as a paymaster in the British Army. But then he became a surveyor for New York.

Joe: Do you remember a couple episodes ago when we were in Cavendish, Vermont?

Abram: The place with the good pie?

Joe: Oh, it was amazing pie.

Abram: That chocolate chip pie is amazing. Yes. That's the biggest reason why I'd ever go back there, though. And if you are from that bakery that we went to, you should know that we liked your pie.

Joe: Yes. But remember that New York and New Hampshire were both fighting each other and founding towns that the other side wasn't recognizing?

Abram: That's Chris Croissant.

Joe: Yes, but do you remember that?

Abram: Yeah, I remember Croissant.

Joe: Well, Samuel Gale was the guy from New York, or one of them, founding towns that New Hampshire was going to ignore.

Joe: When the American Revolution kicked off, he was working in Vermont as a courthouse clerk when a couple of revolutionaries tried to seize the courthouse. He was a loyalist, so he fought off the revolutionaries, but he was still arrested by the local townsfolk. Branded as a loyalist and sent to prison in Connecticut and then New York, where he was ultimately released when New York was brought under British control.

Joe: He returned to the British military as a paymaster before fleeing to London at the end of the war. He fought the government to give him a pension, but they wouldn't do so. With no life for him in London, he decided to return to North America in 1791 to the British colony of Quebec, or what would be Quebec, to work as a surveyor.

Joe: At this point, Quebec had been split into two: Upper Canada and Lower Canada. And if you look on a map trying to figure out which one's upper and lower, I don't think it makes any sense.

Abram: It's like the Egypts and the Austrias.

Joe: Yeah, and there's not really going to be a province called Quebec again until 1867.

Joe: In any event, one of his most important works as a surveyor was to map out Lower Canada, including French towns as well as allocating new British towns. So this is a map of Quebec.

Abram: Whoa, that's Montreal. I didn't realize Montreal was actually an island until recently.

Joe: Yeah, it is. So looking at this map, Abram, over here just to the west, the black lines are where the French settlements are. So just to the west of Argenteuil—I can't even say it in French.

Abram: Can I see?

Joe: Just to the west of that is a cluster of three towns: Wentworth, Grenville, and Chatham, which are all named for Prime Ministers. Three in a row: George Grenville, Charles Watson-Wentworth, and William Pitt the Elder. William Pitt the Elder, the—is he Earl or Duke of Chatham? I don't remember now.

Joe: But the point is that those three towns were named by him, or at least he was given names which he put on his map.

Joe: But in 1795, nobody lived there yet. No one lived in any of the places that he was drawing, and just as we saw in New Hampshire and Vermont, they would often put boxes on maps well before anyone actually lived in it.

Joe: That map did not become official till January 1808, and the first settler didn't arrive to Grenville until 1810.

Joe: By this point, of course, William Grenville had been Prime Minister, so many sources say that that town is named for William and not George. But I am positive that he wrote them on a map in 1795.

Abram: But wait, we might be able to go to Canada there for his episode instead.

Joe: But we can still go to Canada for his episode.

Abram: So like we could go to Grenville, Quebec for his episode if we need to.

Joe: If we need to. The big important point here is that in 1795, William Grenville hadn't been Prime Minister yet, and it's in a cluster with two other Prime Ministers. I think it's pretty clearly George.

Joe: In the intervening years, Grenville became bigger thanks to a canal that they built along the Ottawa River and then the railroads. And today Grenville is like halfway between Montreal and Ottawa, but Ottawa wasn't even a thing until the 1850s.

Joe: The township existed until 2002 when the rural part—which I understood was more French-speaking, but I can't—I'm not positive about that—that became something called Grenville-sur-la-Rouge. While the more English-speaking town of Grenville remained separate. At least one source, I said, claimed that that was the reason. I don't know if that is true.

Joe: And Grenville today just has a population of about 2,000 people. And to the best of my knowledge, this is the only place in the world named for Prime Minister George Grenville.

Abram: There might be some more named for his kid.

Joe: Might be. Abram, it's time to rate him. Rate him! Rate him!

Joe: Our first category is Accomplishments. And we can give up to 20 points each.

Joe: I have a couple of notes. I wrote here that he served a long time in the Commons. He had a pretty stable government, but it never solidified, right? It didn't last. Before he was Prime Minister, we talked about last week, he fought against press-ganging in the Navy and for better naval pay, but he didn't actually succeed in either.

Joe: And he was able to prevent George III and John Stuart from firing him, at least for a while. And near his death, he passed the Grenville Act to reduce the corruption in parliamentary elections. So I ask you, Abram, how much did he accomplish?

Abram: Out of 20, I'm giving him a 4. Like, he didn't accomplish nothing, but his accomplishments definitely got hugely outweighed. And really, the only—the biggest thing he passed, he passed right before his death.

Joe: Agreeing. I'm also going to give him a 4.

Joe: That leads us to Disaccomplishments, where we can give him up to -10.

Abram: This is not how much he angered, but this is like what he undid.

Joe: What he undid, right?

Abram: He didn't really undo that much. He more added to the pain. Do you know what I mean?

Joe: I'm thinking that the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, all of them were major causes of the American Revolution.

Abram: But he didn't like get rid of anything.

Joe: He didn't get rid of anything. But I think that you can argue that he got rid of the US colonies. At least he shares some blame for getting rid of the US colonies.

Abram: How much do we rate it out of?

Joe: He also got rid of a lot of the freedom of the press. Like, he was very much against the press.

Abram: What do we rate it out of?

Joe: We can give him up to -10 points each.

Abram: Out of -10, I'm going to give him -6. He did minus a decent amount, just not a huge amount. -6. Actually, -4.

Joe: -4. I'm actually—I was completely with you on -6.

Abram: I'm going to go back to -6. I thought you thought it was unusual.

Joe: No, no, I'm actually surprised that our ratings are in agreement here.

Abram: So, minus 12.

Abram: Next is how much he angered people.

Joe: Yeah, Bad Personality. We can go up to -10.

Abram: -10.

Joe: What? I don't know if I agree with that.

Abram: He angered the colonists. No, he didn't please anyone. So maybe -9. What are you going with?

Joe: So the thing is—

Abram: Tell me a time where he pleased someone.

Joe: The way that I'm looking at this is a little different than you, and that doesn't mean that your way is wrong. He really broke up his family, and I think that's a big deal. I mean, he's a guy who sought power, got power, but at the cost of, you know, his relationships with his family, and that's a big deal to me.

Joe: But he didn't have any relationship scandals. He had a good marriage. He didn't gamble. He didn't drink. I don't think he has a terrible personality.

Abram: But the thing, the stat is how much he angered people and how bad his personality is. So I may be going with -7.

Joe: Abram is -7. I was going with -4. I think that's fine.

Abram: So that means he's getting -23. So he's currently at -15 points.

Joe: Oh, Grenville, we're so sorry.

Joe: How Interesting Is He?

Abram: This one is actually interesting. 'Cause it's kind of like all of the Prime Ministers like, "Please don't do that. Please don't make yourself the villain." "I will do that." Now you're the villain of your own story in a kind of entertaining way.

Joe: I think so, but also, he spent half of his career just listening to his brother or listening to Pitt. I don't think the early part of his story is that interesting, or his uncle.

Abram: I think the early part of his story is about the Cobham Cubs, not about him. I honestly am counting that as his life story, so I think out of 10, I'm going to give him a 7.

Joe: 7 for Abram. I am going to go with a 6.

Abram: Okay, so he gets 13, right?

Joe: Yes.

Joe: Now we can each give him up to 5 points for Looks.

Abram: He looks pretty good. He looks very friendly, which is surprising considering who we're talking about. He looks like a king, though not as much as the last one, as Bute. I'm going to give him a 7 out of 10. It's a pretty good thing. Just looks a bit too friendly, to be honest.

Joe: I think he looks like a teenager.

Abram: Actually, I'm changing it to 6.

Joe: 6, okay. What do you give him? I mean, he does look surprisingly youthful here.

Abram: What are you giving him?

Joe: 6.

Abram: That means 12.

Joe: Well, divide by 2, so it's 3 and 3, so 6 total.

Abram: So, yeah, he gets a total of about 6.

Joe: For Lifespan, he gets 5.8 points because he lived for 58 years. For Term, he was Prime Minister for 813 days or 2.23 years. But because it's above 1, we get rid of the decimal point for some reason. And so he gets 2 points for Term.

Abram: So I'll total it up. So he gets about 11.8.

Joe: 11.8. That is correct, Abram. You are as good as the spreadsheet.

Joe: It's time to ask the question.

Abram: Cone or ice cream cone?

Joe: I mean, he is our second lowest score. The only person that scored lower is James Waldegrave. How much did he score? 7.8.

Joe: I think it's tough. George Grenville is super famous.

Abram: He's the only one so far that I've learned about in school.

Joe: He's one of the relatively few British Prime Ministers that Americans—

Abram: A lot of Americans know about.

Joe: Yeah. My wife says that she had never heard of him, but clearly some Americans know about him. I am torn on this. I feel like he's a known, but he's like—

Abram: He's the—he got Andrew Jackson.

Joe: He's like the antimatter known.

Abram: He's known because he's not good.

Joe: He is infamously bad.

Abram: So I'm giving him known.

Joe: Okay. It's going to break our rubric, but I agree. I think he should be known only because he is known. Literally. Literally. And just colossally bad. Yeah.

Joe: So congratulations of a sort, Mr. Grenville. You are our fourth known in the series, standing tall with Robert Walpole, Henry—

Abram: Not really, standing a lot shorter than them—

Joe: —and Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Joe: We look forward to you losing quickly in the—

Abram: If we do a knockout, which I think we'll do too. We'll do like the bracket.

Joe: Well, we'll figure it out.

Joe: So with that, friends, thank you for listening from here back in beautiful Walpole, Massachusetts. Say goodnight, Abram.

Abram: Good afternoon.

Bibliography

Joe: First and foremost, I have to thank John from Prime Time podcast for his rendition of "Gentle Shepherd." It was a great song. I know that you're tired of my singing by now. And good news, Abram has now cast John for all future appearances of William Pitt the Elder. Sorry, John. I hope that's okay.

Joe: The key sources for this episode are George Grenville: A Political Life by Phillip Lawson, published in 1984, and A Prologue to Revolution: The Political Career of George Grenville by Allen S. Johnson, published in 1996. In addition, of course, to supplementary and online sources for exploring other subjects like Pontiac's War and things like that.

Joe: In contrast to most of our previous episodes, Grenville has had an utter explosion of sources thanks to his key role in American history, and many of the sources are in fact American. It's been a while since I needed to rely on chapter-length biographies, but Grenville actually had nearly as many books written about him as I think Robert Walpole.

Joe: Looking at my stacks on the shelf, I think the next one with this many will be William Pitt the Elder, but we'll have to see if this trend continues. I want to also thank our editor, Sam Cunningham. You can find him as Sam C Productions on Fiverr.

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