Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

8.1 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (Part 1)

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8.1 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (Part 1)

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Part 1.

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 8.1, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Part 1.

Joe: We're back on the road. We're in Rockingham, Vermont today. We're not out of Prime Minister towns yet.

Abram: How many more do we have?

Joe: Well, Pitt, obviously.

Abram: We're definitely gonna go to Pittsfield there. There's definitely not any cities in Pennsylvania.

Joe: Correct. And then Grafton, that's Augustus Fitzroy.

Abram: Yep.

Joe: For some reason, there's no towns for Lord North, and maybe some of the later ones, but I don't want to spoil any surprises.

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, and comment and review.

Picture This

Joe: We're back in the frozen winter of 1745. This is the Jacobite Revolt, but it's December and we're going to come to that story a little late. The Jacobite army has just abandoned Derby and is trudging to the relative safety of Scotland with Cumberland's Redcoat army in hot pursuit. The Pretender is retreating, but it's still up to all good Englishmen to ensure that the Hanoverian throne is secure.

Joe: Now, if you were looking over a map of northern England, you'd see that those Scots are entering Carlisle now with the British Army not far behind. We're going to zoom in south of them. As we zoom in, we find ourselves at night on the snowy Keighley-Skipton Turnpike. Here we see a 15-year-old Charles Watson-Wentworth shivering on his horse. His clothes—

Abram: How does he have a horse already? He's only 15.

Joe: Everybody had horses back then. They didn't have cars. His clothes and gray riding cloak barely slowed the cold northern winter gusts. Just this morning, he'd been a colonel to a regiment of his father's Yorkshire Blues, but the forged pass in his pocket now calls him Henry Shelley. Charles Watson-Wentworth has run away from home.

Joe: Hooves crunch on the hard mud, skid for a moment on a patch of ice, and then recover. It's slow going, and it's already nearly midnight. He hadn't expected it to be this hard. Charles presses his knees to the mare's flanks and feels the tremor of her effort. If she slips, they're both going to go down.

Joe: To his left is Daniel Hudson, the oldest groom at Wentworth Woodhouse, Charles's ancestral home, and where his father is no doubt pacing nervously in front of the fire. He hoped he would be proud of his patriotism, but he suspected he'd be thought a fool. Daniel was hunched in an old greatcoat he'd had no time to swap for better. At dawn, he thought he was leading the young lord on a day's hunt. Now, without so much as a farewell to the stable-yard, he's riding north into war-torn country. If they're caught with this forged military pass, Daniel could be hanged for the offense.

Joe: Now, don't bother looking up Dan in the history books. When Charles tells the story later, and he will to anyone that'll listen, he never mentions the name of his servant that he forced to come with him. But I'm going to name him. I'm calling him Daniel. I assume that just like the Sherpas that ensured that the early Everest climbers made it up successfully while taking very little credit, that Daniel's probably the reason why this 15-year-old didn't die running away from home into war-torn Northern England.

Abram: Now, whenever we have a person that doesn't have a name, like, to tell us why Cam calls them Jeff, we'll call them Daniel. Deal?

Joe: Sure. The trek has been slow going, but a light appears on the turnpike ahead. What starts as a dull glow in the woods gradually comes into focus. Torches, muskets, and the Skipton Night Watch. Carts and beer barrels block the road, save for a narrow passage guarded on both sides. Charles's stomach knots. He touches the inside breast pocket, his parchment still there, two quills' worth of ink, and his own boyish signature twice disguised.

Joe: You see, Charles planned this. He wrote the pass himself with one quill and ink, trying to disguise his handwriting. Then he signed it Viscount Higham, his proper title, with another. Technically, he could sign a pass for a volunteer heading north, but pretending to be that common volunteer, however, that was another matter.

Joe: "Don't forget," he mutters half to himself, "my name is Henry Shelley, leave granted by Viscount Higham."

Joe: He stops mumbling to himself as he approaches the lantern-lit sentry post. A tall bearded man bars his way. He's wearing a watchcoat, blue-faced collar, halberd butt thudding into the frost. "Your business at this late hour, sir?"

Joe: Charles tries to drop his voice an octave. "To join His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland by order of my Lord Viscount Higham." He removes the pass from his pocket and hands it over. He hopes that the guard doesn't see his trembling hand and that maybe he looks a little older in the lantern light.

Joe: His heart beats as the guard reads the pass. Six heartbeats. Seven. The militiaman's brow creases. Charles panics. He feels it in his stomach. Does he recognize me? But then his face smooths. "Very well. Keep to the high road. Jacobite scouts were seen on Rylstone Fell three nights since, and you two would be an easy prize."

Joe: Pikes scrape aside, horse hooves clatter once more. Oil lanterns of Skipton Market Street flare ahead in the icy dark. Charles leads his horse with Dan right behind. Dan didn't need a pass. The help was almost always beneath notice.

Joe: Ninety miles in the dead of winter sit between Charles and Cumberland's camp at Carlisle. Ninety miles of war-torn country, snow-choked passes, shuttered inns, and probably more than a few brigands taking advantage of the war to do a little bit of adventuring on their own. It's been one day, only 14 hours since he ran away from home. The first gate was down.

Joe: Charles squared his shoulders, breath pluming in the lantern glow, and he rides on. In forging that single sheet of paper, Charles risked a felony charge and his family's honour. Yet the pass and his nerve carried him past every outpost between Airedale and the Eden Valley, a reckless dash through enemy-haunted country that would make this 15-year-old aristocrat a minor legend before the year's end. But only if he survived the trip.

Abram: Dun dun dun!

Joe: How was that, Abram?

Abram: It was good.

Ancestry

Joe: Let's start this off a bit differently. Instead of talking about Charles's ancestors, I want to talk about a castle. Just outside of Corby in Northamptonshire, there's an impressive hill that overlooks a nearby valley. It was a great site for a fort, and there's some evidence that the Romans and the Saxons, or maybe even both, had a presence there. William the Conqueror saw this amazing hill, and he decided to build a castle of his own. William I built it with wood, but William II replaced it with a stone castle.

Abram: So William the Conqueror built it with wood. However, William II or William Rufus didn't like that.

Joe: Well, he made it stronger. He rebuilt it with stone.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: And over the centuries, it started to look like what a castle should look like.

Abram: Maybe some woodworkers didn't like that. And then when he went hunting one day, maybe it was the woodworkers that did it.

Joe: Maybe.

Abram: If anyone gets my reference.

Joe: So over the centuries, it started to look like what you might imagine a castle to look like. And Abram, here's a picture. What do you think of that?

Abram: Tower of London.

Joe: It's kind of in a similar style, isn't it?

Abram: I literally thought it was the Tower of London.

Joe: It is not. It is a much smaller castle. So this castle that you have in your hand was located in the Rockingham Forest. And so it's known as Rockingham Castle. Before too long, it wasn't needed as a defensive fortification anymore, and it just became a place for rich nobles to stay where they could hunt in the nearby woods.

Abram: And that's when William II went hunting in the nearby woods, and the woodworkers who worked on the castle in the village nearby— Ah! Killed him with a bow and arrow.

Joe: Oh, right. Yeah, they killed William Rufus.

Abram: Does it make sense now?

Joe: That makes sense. They were really attached to the original castle. Got it. So let's zoom ahead a couple of years. By the time of Henry VIII, a man named Sir Edward Watson bought the castle, and it became the ancestral home for a long line of Watsons. These Watsons were important locally. A couple entered Parliament.

Abram: And some of them met Sherlock Holmes.

Joe: Well, a distant descendant of them might have met Sherlock Holmes.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: And one of them would even become the Sheriff of Northamptonshire. King Charles I, before his untimely death, he'd made Lewis Watson into a baron, Baron Rockingham, with the title derived from the name of Rockingham Castle.

Joe: Now, Lewis Watson had a son named Edward who married a woman from the prominent Wentworth family. Hmm, a Watson marrying a Wentworth. I suspect you can see where this is going.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: Edward's first and second sons, they're not going to be important to our story, but his third son was named Thomas Watson. Now, naturally, Thomas wasn't going to inherit that Rockingham family castle because he was a third son. So he just needed to go off and make his name in another way.

Abram: By asking the woodworkers' descendants to get them another bow and kill his brothers?

Joe: Good idea. No. In this case, the other way was to become very close friends with his uncle, William Wentworth. You remember how Thomas Pelham-Holles ended up as his uncle's favourite kid? And when his uncle died without any kids of his own, Thomas got all of the— Now this is where he got inspiration from, maybe, because it's going to work out exactly the same way. When William Wentworth dies, Thomas Watson, he renamed himself Thomas Watson-Wentworth, and he basically got a massive amount of the Wentworth family fortune.

Abram: Watson's already married the Wentworths.

Joe: His dad had married a Wentworth. That means the Wentworths were his uncle now. But one of his uncles, his oldest uncle I assume, didn't have any kids. And so he essentially stepped in and became that uncle's kid and ended up inheriting a lot of the Wentworth family fortune. And this included the Wentworth Woodhouse, which we've mentioned, and a lot of property in Yorkshire, Northamptonshire.

Joe: Wentworth Woodhouse is the ancestral seat of the Wentworth family. Let me show you a picture of that so you know. And it is called a Woodhouse, I assume because it is made of wood.

Abram: House.

Joe: Now, what's amazing about this house, and I don't know how much of it was done at this period when Thomas became Thomas Watson-Wentworth, but this house is gigantic. This is the longest—

Abram: I'm surprised it isn't called a mansion.

Joe: I mean, it's by far beyond most mansions could ever be. This is one of the longest houses in Britain, if not the world. We'll put this up on our socials. Basically, this house is, I don't know, 20 or more houses long. The point is, this house is world famous for being really, really, really long. Is it— and being a very, very big house. I think it's like regular house depth. I don't think it's like a super thin house. It's not like a facade that's really long. I think it's a regular depth of house.

Abram: It doesn't go one foot back. Yep.

Joe: This Thomas Watson-Wentworth we just mentioned is Charles's grandfather. He already has a son at this time, also named Thomas, and that's going to be Charles's dad. But for simplicity, I'm just going to call them Grandpa and Dad. Okay?

Abram: Okay.

Joe: This is the 1690s, maybe the early 1700s, and the two of them, Grandpa and Dad, were becoming increasingly prominent in Whig politics. Grandpa entered Parliament in 1701. Dad entered Parliament in 1715. They're Whigs, but they're very strange Whigs. So they support Whig candidates, they give a lot of money, but they almost always vote against the Whigs on bills. I don't get it. They still were super important. They were well-liked by the Whig establishment.

Abram: Maybe it's because they wore an early 1800s style wig instead of the Charles II/Captain Hook style wig.

Joe: You know, that could be it. They were just wigs of a different kind. Charles's dad married a woman named Lady Mary Finch, and they started a family together. This family is going to end up having a lot of deaths. They will have 11 children. Very few of them will make it to adulthood. The sources I read don't even list a lot of the kids because they died so quickly. The first kid, William, born 1718, died a few weeks later. Second son, Thomas, born in 1720. He didn't die a few weeks later. And then Anne in 1722. But more of his kids are going to die than live. And I'm sure that was very tough.

Abram: Are these Charles's siblings?

Joe: These are Charles's siblings because Charles isn't born yet. But Dad was doing great politically. He was the MP for Malton. That was a town in Yorkshire. And he was a supporter of Robert Walpole and Thomas Pelham-Holles. He was knighted in 1725, and he was made the Baron Malton in 1728.

Abram: But he never became a Knight of Undies.

Joe: I don't think so.

Abram: No.

Joe: Now, I don't want to turn this into an episode about Charles's dad, but—

Abram: Which is what it is.

Joe: The family might have had a deep dark secret.

Abram: What?

Joe: We don't know. So in 1728, just before he was made a baron, Charles's dad burned all of the papers and books that had been collected by a historian named Richard Gascoigne, which were given to the Watson-Wentworths on this historian's death for safekeeping. These papers and books and manuscripts were about life in Yorkshire going all the way back to the Norman period. But for some reason, and nobody knows why, Thomas's lawyer told him, burn them all.

Joe: They call this a literary holocaust, the destruction of hundreds of years of records of Yorkshire history, family histories. Historians are still upset about this. Our best guess is that there was something in those histories that presented the Watson-Wentworth family, or maybe the Watsons, or maybe the Wentworths, in a bad light. And maybe even that they weren't the proper heirs to Wentworth Woodhouse. But nobody knows for sure what it was because he did such an effective job of burning all the evidence, even modern historians can't figure it out.

Joe: On May 13th, 1730, Charles Watson-Wentworth was born. He's his parents' eighth kid, their third son, the third living son, and he's not expected to inherit much. When he was born, yes, he had two older brothers, Thomas and William. They did have a William that died after a week, but then they named another one William.

Abram: So the first William died.

Joe: The first William died, so they made a replacement William.

Abram: Hey, you shouldn't do that.

Joe: It seems very rude, but they did. And he also had two older sisters, Anne and Mary. And it's time for some silver spoons.

Silver Spoons

Joe: Charles was born to a wealthy Yorkshire family with many connections. His father's career is just about to skyrocket thanks to his close ties with the Duke of Newcastle. But of course, we only count how connected his family was at the time of his birth. And actually, Charles is much better connected to his mother's side than his father's. Three of his mother's brothers, his uncles, were MPs. His grandfather was an Earl.

Abram: We don't count them.

Joe: We do count them for Silver Spoons. When we calculate Silver Spoons, we have two sections. The first section is his immediate family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone that is sort of directly related on either the father or the mother's side. And then we have an ancestry section which goes up his grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, up his father's line.

Joe: His total Silver Spoons score works out to be 27. Which is about the same as Henry Pelham or John Stuart. Charles's family, far from poor, but he is not yet heir to a fortune. Growing up, do you want to guess his nickname?

Abram: What?

Joe: I think we saw this with someone else, right? They had weird family nicknames.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: His nickname was Punch. We know that his mother, Lady Mary, was unusually doting on her children.

Abram: What's that mean?

Joe: That means that she spent more time with them. At this point, you know, they might have been expected that they'd be raised by nursemaids and governesses, especially for a family as wealthy as they were, but she actually was very directly involved in her children's lives.

Joe: Since this isn't an episode about Charles's dad, let me just summarize by saying that he continued to do well in politics. He was added to the Privy Council of Ireland in 1733, made the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and became the Earl of Malton in 1734, among other titles. This allows Charles's older brother to be called the Viscount Higham as a courtesy title.

Joe: But around 1734, the family had a major blow. Thomas— so that's his second older brother— he died of smallpox. And Dad is going to become a huge proponent of the new smallpox inoculations.

Abram: Is smallpox becoming the main killing disease right now?

Joe: I mean, smallpox is a major killing disease. They just now have developed an inoculation.

Abram: That's the cow scene.

Joe: Yes. And that is before the safe vaccine is going to be developed late in the 1700s. Thomas is a major proponent of this new inoculation. He insisted that most of his children get it. However, Charles couldn't get it because he was stuck at home sick at the time. And this is something important. Charles is never going to have good health.

Abram: Just because he happened to be sick that day?

Joe: No, he pretty much grew up sickly. He had something called his "old complaint" that he would very often get sick, and he's gonna be sick quite a lot as we continue this story.

Abram: So the opposite of me. I never get sick. You get sick a lot.

Joe: He always seemed to suffer from one disease or another, and historians don't really have a good idea of what was actually going on. When Charles was eight, he enrolled in Westminster School in London, where he was known for his, quote, "bold pranks and dramatics," and seemed to have been a fun kid, although not a well-behaved one and not a very studious one.

Joe: But tragedy struck the family a second time. 1739, now his older brother William died.

Abram: Both brothers died.

Joe: Both of his older brothers have now died, and Charles is now the oldest son. Assuming that he lives to adulthood, which must have seemed very precarious at the time, he would be the one that would inherit that family fortune. And now he can be known as Viscount Higham. He's going to have a whole bunch of titles. You don't need to keep track. But at this part of his life, he was called Higham.

Joe: Because of all of this death, the family became even more concerned about illnesses. They even withdrew him from Westminster School in 1741 because he had a flu that kept him in bed for almost a whole year.

Abram: Huh?

Joe: Yes. But I'm a little bit suspicious of this. The family was a big proponent of certain treatments which they thought would help.

Abram: But like what?

Joe: They believed in bloodletting.

Abram: Ooh.

Joe: And there are records of them saying that whenever he was sick, they would have him let out some blood. And they also used mercury treatments. So we now know that mercury is a poison. Yeah, so the point is, I'm a little bit worried that part of the reason why Charles is so sick so much of the time is that every time he so much as gets the sniffles, his parents cut his vein open and feed him mercury. It does not seem like a good way to make a person healthy.

Abram: Well, like, did they do it to his siblings?

Joe: Yep.

Abram: Why?

Joe: Because this was medicine of the day. They thought they were making him better. They were probably making him worse. Charles was not an academic kid. He was enrolled at Cambridge University, but he only stayed there for less than a year. But as we approach 1745 and the Jacobites are massing just to the north, a 15-year-old Charles is going to embark on one of the greatest adventures of his life.

Defending Yorkshire

Joe: I probably don't need to remind you, Abram, at this point what happened in 1745, especially since—

Abram: There's a Jacobite rebellion. I think it was Thomas Pelham-Holles who was on top of buildings.

Joe: Actually, the Jacobite rebellions have been pretty common for a lot of our Prime Ministers as being super important. But Henry Pelham and Thomas Pelham-Holles were in the 1715 one. But William Cavendish is nearby dealing with this.

Abram: Oh, is that the one where he asked to retreat?

Joe: Yes. Dad, as I said, was Lord Lieutenant in the West Riding, and Yorkshire is in northern England, not far from the border with Scotland.

Abram: I have a question. Why did they have ridings?

Joe: I don't know.

Abram: As if we're just riding a horse there and that's how they define it.

Joe: You and I may learn more about this because in Canada, their parliamentary seats are based on ridings, not towns and counties and things. So maybe when we talk about Canada, we'll learn about this.

Abram: Maybe it's an Indian Prime Minister thing we're going to start in like two or three years.

Joe: We'll see. This meant that not only was the Jacobites a real threat, Charles's dad was one of the people that was responsible for keeping people safe. But at the start, Yorkshire was unprepared. Taxes that were supposed to support a Yorkshire militia had not been collected in decades. They had no trained soldiers, very few working weapons, and it was mostly just a mess, even as Scottish troops were massing a couple hundred miles north.

Joe: Thomas, Charles's dad, did what he could do. He threw money at the problem. Very quickly in the weeks up to the invasion, he and the other Yorkshire Lord Lieutenants raised money from merchants and aristocrats. They started a volunteer militia called the Yorkshire Blues. And those volunteers were gonna be paid and armed, and Thomas mustered—

Abram: When they say Blues, do they mean they like the color blue? Or does it mean they like jazz music?

Joe: It means the color blue because the Hanoverian color was blue. And so by being the Yorkshire Blues, they were like the Yorkshire Hanoverians.

Abram: Uh, you're nowhere near Hanover.

Joe: I think you know why.

Abram: George. Yeah.

Joe: This probably sounds familiar, right? We saw this already. We just mentioned it was William Cavendish. He had something called the Devonshire Blues. And as far as I can tell, this is just a coincidence. The only two Blues militias that I can find were Yorkshire and Devonshire. So why that was, I have no idea.

Abram: So that means if I form a militia called the Boston Blues, that means I'll be guaranteed to become president?

Joe: I'm pretty sure that's not how this works. The West Riding, the area that Thomas was responsible for, managed to amass 25 militia companies, or about 1,375 men, including sergeants, drummers, and fighters.

Abram: Drummers? I knew there were a band.

Joe: One source claimed that Thomas personally contributed 60 footmen and 14 horses.

Abram: 60 footmen? Then there were 60 60-foot tall? How, how did he get people who were 60-foot tall?

Joe: Regardless of the amounts or how tall they were, he had a major impact on the success of this place.

Abram: Because of the giants running around and stomping on everything.

Joe: Naturally, because Charles's dad was building this group, Charles was given a role in it that was appropriate for a young Viscount. He was made the Colonel. That meant that he was in charge of several companies, each led by a Captain. Sources differ on how many troops were really under his command, but one source said about 500.

Abram: 500 giants or 500 of everything?

Joe: 500 of everything.

Abram: Oh, that's a lot of giants.

Joe: So William Cavendish, remember, he was another Prime Minister. When he was in his militia, he was only a Captain. He was 25. But young Charles Watson-Wentworth, he's only 15 and he's a Colonel. This 15-year-old has a higher military rank than the 25-year-old.

Abram: How does that work?

Joe: His dad paid for it.

Abram: Yeah, with the money.

Joe: The point is that for both William Cavendish and for Charles Watson-Wentworth, they were both given big roles because their parents had paid for them, and they probably had better leaders underneath them that would actually help.

Joe: By November 2nd, Charles had been ordered to train and drill his troops and then present them to his father at Rotherham.

Abram: What's he doing drilling his troops? Is he just getting a giant drill and drilling into them whenever they misbehave?

Joe: His group was gonna be placed around Pontefract and Wakefield, and they were gonna be guarding the western part of Yorkshire from the Pretender's army.

Abram: The West Riding of Yorkshire?

Joe: Yep. Honestly, there isn't all that much an all-volunteer force could do with just a few weeks' training against an invading Scottish army.

Abram: I thought they had giants.

Joe: They don't have giants, Abram.

Abram: What? You said they had 60 footmen.

Joe: They had 60 footmen, not 60-foot men. There's a difference.

Abram: I refuse to believe you.

Joe: There wasn't all that much that this extremely real militia that had normal-sized people could do against a Scottish army. It was hoped that his militia would act as a deterrent, and it worked. The Pretender's army descended into England on the west coast, where there was less organized resistance. They never got closer than 50 miles to Charles as they marched south, and Charles's militia did not chase them. They did not find them. They did not follow them. They were just there to keep Yorkshire safe, and that was it. No fighting, no glory.

Joe: So on November 26th, the Pretender's army passed Charles, and he just stood around doing nothing, defending West Yorkshire. As you remember, the Pretender made it as far as Derby, got scared, turned around, and once again they went on the west coast of England. They passed Charles by 50 miles, probably around December 11th, and he did nothing except stand around and tried his best to look important.

Joe: And any sensible person would have been relieved at this, Abram. Charles and his militia did not want to fight the Scots. They had a full, not professional, but very good Scottish army that had won some battles. They were heading south. He did not want his tiny little ragtag group to get in their way.

Abram: You're calling giants tiny?

Joe: But Charles was not relieved. He was disappointed. He was upset.

Abram: That he didn't fight and get killed.

Joe: He might even have been livid that he did not fight and get killed. He wanted military honour, and his chance of getting military honour had just been dashed. So we don't let—

Abram: Did Cavendish get any action?

Joe: Nope. Cavendish ran away.

Abram: Did anyone get action here?

Joe: Plenty of people got action, but none of the Prime Ministers.

Abram: Aw, that's sad.

Joe: So, Abram, we don't let 15-year-olds drive because they don't make great decisions.

Abram: But we do let 16-year-olds drive. It wouldn't be that bad to just lower the age.

Joe: The point is that a 15-year-old— they're sort of older than you, but they still don't make great decisions. And he was about to make a pretty bad one.

Abram: You say I don't make great decisions?

Running Towards War

Joe: This, Abram, is where Picture This comes into play. Charles was a crafty guy. He wanted to get that glory. So he forged a pass that he signed himself that said to allow this soldier to travel to the north to the Duke of Cumberland's army. He made the pass out to Henry Shelley, and that's an alias that he's going to use for the whole trip.

Joe: When the danger had passed, his militia was given time off. And a couple sources say it had already disbanded, either officially or unofficially. So Charles, Abram, had time to relax. So on December 18th, he got up in the morning, ostensibly to take a short hunting trip. But instead of going hunting, he snuck away and began his terrifying trip to the north. Here's a map for you to look at, to look and follow along on his journey. But of course, he didn't go alone. He took a servant with him.

Abram: And the woodworkers.

Joe: We named the servant Daniel, and I'm sure that helped a lot. At Bradford, he made his first stop. He sent a letter to his father telling him what he was doing, but he deliberately sent it slowly and actually sent it to another colonel in the militia so that by the time the father got his note, it was going to be too late to follow him.

Joe: You have to imagine that his parents were terrified, right? They'd already lost their two oldest sons. And there were no more sons after this point. Seeing their last son disappear into the North England woods, probably not so good.

Joe: At Skipton, where he arrived that first night, he reached a military roadblock. They were preventing refugees, anyone, from traveling north to south, ensuring that there were no Jacobite spies or anything being let through. But he used the pass that he forged, and he was able to convince them to let him pass through the town, and keep going north.

Joe: It was a terrible trek. He was traveling overland in a very cold winter through areas of Northern England that were being invaded by a foreign army. He traveled by road where he could, but this was before they invented snowplows, and so the weather, it just became worse and worse.

Joe: At Settle, he was almost arrested. An innkeeper thought he was a Jacobite spy, was reporting him to a constable, but he managed to talk his way out of it. Part of his problem actually was that in his haste to leave, he had not packed any extra clothes. So by this point, the ones he were wearing were very dirty and just increasingly ragged. He no longer looked like this rich aristocratic military kid, whether he had a servant with him or not.

Joe: We're going to jump ahead a few more adventures, but by December 22nd, he had finally caught up to Cumberland in Carlisle. Unfortunately, he had missed the battle. Cumberland had gotten to Carlisle, defeated the Jacobites there. The Jacobites had fled further, and now Cumberland is turning Carlisle into a little military headquarters temporarily while he decides on what to do next.

Joe: While he was deciding, Cumberland just decided to stick around. Charles tried to make contact with people that he knew in the army, but he failed. He had no way to introduce himself. He had just walked all the way into the north of England, and—

Abram: How far did he go?

Joe: I forget the exact number of miles, but if you take a look here, like, this shows where he was on each day. And he wasn't walking, I should clarify. He was taking a horse. He started on the 19th and he ended on the 22nd. So he basically—

Abram: I thought he started on the 18th.

Joe: Yeah, you're right. This map says the 19th, but the other book says the 18th.

Abram: I assume at Bradford he got there on the 19th, but he started on the 18th.

Joe: Something like that. In any event, the point is that he's now been riding north for about four to five days. He had just arrived at a fortified town that had just been occupied by Cumberland's army, and if he just walked in, right, that was dangerous. So he ended up sleeping in a barn that night, but with no way to make it the rest of the way into the city.

Joe: But this is where Charles got lucky. By this time, his father's search party, which had been following up the English countryside, had caught up to him. Plus, his father had sent letters directly to the Duke of Cumberland explaining the situation and that his 15-year-old colonel was on his way.

Joe: The Duke's private secretary managed to find Charles. I don't know how, but I assume a bedraggled 15-year-old aristocrat with a servant wandering around the outskirts of a military camp was probably not all that hard to find. The man gave Charles some fresh clothing and led him into Carlisle Castle, where the Duke had made his headquarters.

Joe: Cleaned up, freshly dressed, Charles Watson-Wentworth was led into an audience with Prince William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland. Cumberland seemed to take the whole thing in good graces and perhaps a bit of humour. He was impressed, this 15-year-old who snuck out to fight for his king and his country. He wasn't going to let Charles join his army. He was 15, inexperienced, and, well, you had to buy a commission at the time. But he kept him close and sent a letter to Thomas to tell him that his son was safe.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Cumberland wrote that Charles's, quote, "zeal on this occasion shows the same principles fixed that you yourself have given such strong proofs of."

Abram: Who's "you"?

Joe: Thomas. He's writing to Charles's dad. In fact, Cumberland kept him super safe. He pretty much put him under house arrest, gave him a room near his in the castle, and told him that he wasn't allowed to mingle with any troops. It might have been in fear that he would do something stupid, like try to join one of their companies. But Cumberland kept him close.

Joe: Charles would later report that Cumberland, quote, "blamed me for my disobedience, yet as I came with a design of saving my king and country, it greatly palliated my offence."

Joe: So how long was Charles there? In the end, Cumberland arranged for Charles to stay with him just a few days. The prince was planning to return to London after Christmas, and Charles was going to ride in his carriage with himself. This experience seemed to spark a lifelong friendship between Cumberland and Charles. Cumberland's not going to forget the crazy 15-year-old that risked his life to join his army.

Abram: Is Cumberland the same one that almost became Prime Minister?

Joe: Yes.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: They're going to become friends. They're going to bond over a shared love of horse racing and being very, very rich. Charles was a hero when he got home. His journey was being talked about by everyone.

Joe: Quote, "Though I hope you won't tell him it, never has anything met with such general applause. In short, he is the hero of these times, and His Majesty talks of this young subject in such terms as must please you to hear. In the drawing room, no two people talk together but he makes part of the discourse."

Abram: Huh.

Joe: Everyone was talking about Charles's adventure, and his father saw this as an opportunity. So Charles was writing a journal while he went, Charles's dad published the journal. He spread the message of his trip north. He essentially made Charles into the 1745 equivalent of a celebrity. Charles was a symbol of what a good and patriotic aristocrat should be.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: I have a few quick points about 1745 before we move on. First, during the 1745 Rebellion, Jacobites were Catholic. And so there were laws that were passed that discriminated against Catholics in England.

Abram: Were all Jacobites Catholics?

Joe: Most.

Abram: And were all Catholics Jacobites?

Joe: No.

Abram: Then why— couldn't they just do it against Jacobites?

Joe: Yes.

Abram: But why'd they do it against Catholics?

Joe: Because they were not nice. The point is that Thomas Watson-Wentworth agreed with you, and he refused to enforce those rules against the Yorkshire Catholics. And Charles is later going to take this to heart.

Joe: Secondly, and slightly ironically, the Yorkshire Blues, that group that Charles had been leading, they did end up fighting in Cumberland's army after all. Around the time that Charles left, the militia was disbanded and troops were asked to join the militia.

Abram: So that means no more giants and drummers and other musicians.

Joe: Exactly. 280 members of Charles's force, which was a small percent, remember they had at least 1,300, joined up someone named Captain Thornton, and they marched north in their blue uniforms, and they fought with Cumberland for the remainder of the war, just not with Charles.

Abram: Aw.

Joe: And finally, one of the men that served Charles in the regiment was named Sir John Ramsden. He was a family friend, and he just happened to have a stepdaughter named Mary Bright. Now, she was 11 at this time, so too young to marry. But so was Charles.

Abram: So, they married.

Joe: You might wanna keep them in mind for later, because at some point, and no one knows when, they were engaged to be married. Probably not yet, but it's gonna happen at some point. Charles was famous, his father was well respected, and they were now close friends with the Duke of Cumberland. Good things are gonna come to the Watson-Wentworth family.

A New Title

Joe: Do you remember how a couple generations back, Charles's family split from the main line of Watsons? Because they were descended from a third son and not the first. Those Watsons had been the Earls of Rockingham, and they're the ones that have Rockingham Castle.

Abram: And the woodworkers.

Joe: And apparently the woodworkers. But that whole branch of the family is about to die.

Abram: All of them?

Joe: All of them.

Abram: At the same time?

Joe: Yes.

Abram: How?

Joe: Well, they just didn't have any more kids, and then the last one just died.

Abram: So that means most of the woodworkers, all the woodworkers that weren't following Charles had died.

Joe: I'm not sure. Maybe the woodworkers killed them.

Abram: Probably. I'm guessing it was probably the woodworkers killed them.

Joe: On February 26, 1746, Thomas Watson, the Earl of Rockingham, died.

Abram: Because of the woodworkers, I assume.

Joe: The earldom went extinct, but the rest of the Watson lands and titles were divided between a few distant cousins. Charles's dad inherited the title Baron Rockingham, as well as the core Rockingham estate, including the castle. This made very little difference, as Thomas Watson-Wentworth was already an Earl.

Joe: But that was not enough of a gift to give the recent hero of Yorkshire and his exceptional son. So George II gave Charles's dad a rare promotion. He made him not the Earl of Rockingham, but the Marquess of Rockingham. Do you remember which one's higher, Earl or Marquess?

Abram: Marquess.

Joe: Yes. Marquess was an official title between Earl and Duke, but there were almost no other Marquesses in England at this time. I think there was only— This was a rare, rare honour. Why he just didn't go with Duke, I have no idea.

Joe: But I have a theory about this. It's probably wrong. It's just my theory. So, the original title of Marquess, or in French, Marquis, which also comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "mark"—

Abram: Which is why Denmark is Mark.

Joe: It was a title for borderlands. And what better title to give the hero of the borderlands? Okay, Yorkshire's not really the border.

Abram: It was the border at the time, in the middle of the war.

Joe: Yeah, in the middle of the war, yeah. What better title to give the hero of this northern border town than Marquess?

Joe: There was a video game that I used to play, I think it was called Final Fantasy XII. They had a character called the Marquess Ondore or something, and I used to be so mad. "It's Marquis! It's Marquis!" I would shout at the screen. But it was actually Marquess because they were basing it on the English title, not the French. But I had never heard of the English title when I was a kid because very few people use it.

Abram: I think it's also spelled different or something.

Joe: Yeah. No matter the reason, this gave Charles a promotion as well. Instead of being the Viscount Higham, now he has his father's old title and he's gonna be called the Earl of Malton.

Joe: His dad apparently gets a nickname. People start calling him, quote, "the little Marquess." I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but unfortunately Charles's dad has a problem. Because his 15-year-old son is still obsessed with the military. His brush against Cumberland had made him very interested in joining and fighting. But this wasn't what Thomas wanted for his son. He had to find a way to distract Charles. It was a little bit too early for it, but what better way to distract him from joining the military than by sending him on a Grand Tour?

Abram: Of course.

Partying His Way Through Europe

Joe: To complete the new Earl's education, Thomas hired a tutor for him named George Quarme, and they sent them off to Geneva.

Abram: In Switzerland.

Joe: And this was during the War of Austrian Succession, so he had to travel to Europe in a very long and very dangerous way, because if he went anywhere near France, or I think Spain—

Abram: France. They were—

Joe: The point is, if a young English noble were to travel through France or Spain while they were at war with England, he would be captured or killed. So they had to take the long way through The Hague and Germany.

Abram: The Hague.

Joe: The trip was uneventful, but Charles was not a good student. His time in Geneva was spent focusing on entertaining instead of studying, and Quarme reported this message back to Charles's dad, including how quickly Charles was just spending all of his money. By December 1747, he was out of money.

Abram: Oops.

Joe: In fact, Quarme even had to loan him some of his own, but there was no way for a tutor to keep up with the expenses of a young noble. He wrote back to Thomas, Charles's dad, to ask for more money. But instead of sending money, he sent a demand. Charles had to come home.

Abram: Aw, he barely got a tour.

Joe: There's more. Just give him a minute. Charles did return home.

Abram: Aw.

Joe: But back in Britain, Charles's dad took him on a tour of the family estates. Charles's dad was, I think, beginning to get a little bit ill at this time, and he knew that Charles was one day gonna need to be in charge of all of this stuff. And so he better learn about it.

Joe: After six months at home touring his estates, Charles was permitted to go back to Europe, resume his Grand Tour. But this time, Quarme wasn't a good tutor. He couldn't actually teach Charles anything. So they found another tutor. His name was Major James Forester. Forester was a military man, and it was hoped that he would have a stronger influence on young Charles. Let me just jump ahead by telling you that he failed miserably.

Abram: He was probably killed by the woodworkers later anyways, considering they're woodworkers and he's a Forester.

Joe: With the war over, Charles could visit France this time. He traveled through France, going to Savoy, Piedmont, the Italian peninsula. He had to stay in France until he learned French, but he learned French pretty quickly, probably helped by that time he spent in Geneva.

Joe: And then the rest of the tour was a mix of education and social networking. Or at least was supposed to be. He spent time with the nobility in each place that he traveled to. His tour of Italy was exhaustive, with stops in Parma, Piacenza, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Venice, Rome, and more.

Abram: I didn't know "more" was a city.

Joe: Although this was supposed to be an educational trip, Charles seems to have had a very good time. Charles kept a coded journal of his travels, marking down all the women and men that he spent time with using symbols to denote whether he had, quote, "been in their house," or "dined" with them, presumably meaning lunch, or he "supped" with them, presumably meaning dinner. And then there's a fourth symbol, and the fourth symbol is less clear.

Joe: This is a little tough to talk about with a kid, and not all historians would agree with this, but there's a little bit of evidence that the fourth symbol, well, is him spending the night, shall we say. It could have just really been a social journal, and the inclusion of men and women suggests that that might be what it was. Or it could be that Charles Watson-Wentworth likes spending time with both men and women, which was not that common at the time. I'm not going to say either way. I don't know whether this was secretly a sex journal, but there's at least some evidence that it was, and I'll leave that to our listeners to sort of decide for themselves.

Joe: Adding to the possibility that this was an adult activity journal, we know that Charles took a detour to Padua to visit a doctor who was famous across Europe for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: In fact, we still have the original diagnosis from that doctor in very, very disgusting detail. The point is that Charles ended up in bed for, like, two months sick because of an STD in the middle of his Grand Tour because maybe he was having extracurricular activities.

Abram: What year is this?

Joe: This is 1750. This disease that he picked up while sleeping around Europe may have been the reason that he could never have kids later. But we should be careful because we don't really know. Like, the historians don't like making medical conclusions based on descriptions that are hundreds of years old. But I will tell you that I read the diagnosis, and there's some things in this world that I wish I could unread.

Joe: It was around this time that Charles's parents decided to surprise him— surprise!— by announcing that he was engaged to Mary Bright. Okay. Charles was very excited for this, but I think it was actually a message by his parents: We know what you're doing. Stop it. You are an engaged man. Did it work? I have no idea.

Joe: We do know that he tried to buy her a harpsichord in Rome.

Abram: That's like an original piano.

Joe: But he had no way to ship it back to Britain. Why did he have no way to ship it back? How do you ship a piano from Rome to Britain in 1700? Just carry it with you. I'm sure it will work. I think that's what he thought too. And he approached it with the same conviction as an 11-year-old.

Joe: Other than fun and games, Charles met with many important people. He met Charles Emmanuel, the Duke of Savoy. He met Emperor Francis and Maria Theresa while in Vienna. He spent time in Hanover with George II and Thomas Pelham-Holles. And actually, Thomas Pelham-Holles really seemed to like him. Every night that Charles was in Hanover, he had to have dinner with Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle. Why? Because the Duke of Newcastle really liked him.

Abram: And wasn't he like his tutor? No. Was that another guy?

Joe: That was another guy. You're thinking of a different Prime Minister entirely.

Abram: Yeah, but which Prime Minister was Pelham-Holles the tutor to?

Joe: Pelham-Holles wasn't a tutor. You're thinking of Waldegrave. Waldegrave and Bute were both tutors. I don't think Newcastle was a tutor. Was he?

Joe: The point is that either Thomas Pelham-Holles really liked Charles or he really liked Charles's parents' money. I don't know which. Oh, money, money.

Joe: As he was preparing to return home, Charles was gifted with something else. He was now the Earl of Malton in the Peerage of Ireland. So he was already called the Earl of Malton in the British system, but that was because his father was the Marquess of Rockingham, and this allowed him to be called Malton in his own right as a noble of Ireland. He would also be allowed to sit in the Irish House of Lords when he came of age, but he's never going to do that.

Joe: The title didn't matter for long because on December 14th, 1750, Charles's father died and he had to rush back to England.

Abram: So if his father lasted about one more year, he would probably have done it in Ireland.

Joe: He might have, or he might have just taken it as, oh, the king gave me an honour, I'll be very glad to be called Earl Malton now.

A Birthday Party Like No Other

Joe: As Charles races back to England to claim his inheritance, let's pause for a second to look at exactly what he just got. He is now really, really, really rich. He just received 14,000 acres, 22 square miles of property in Yorkshire, most of which is around his massive mansion. He now owns Wentworth Woodhouse. This is going to remain the base of operations for the rest of his life.

Joe: He doesn't even need to share it with his mother because she is going to move away to Harrowden, where they have another mansion, in order to let him keep the house. He also had property in Malton and other Yorkshire towns, almost five square miles in Northamptonshire, and he had 84 square miles of property in Ireland.

Abram: Whoa.

Joe: Mostly in County Wicklow, but also Kildare and Wexford. He has a lot of property, and for any time that he just happens to be visiting London, he has a mansion in Grosvenor Square, which is where he will be when he's in government.

Abram: So wait, I think the woodworkers should say goodbye soon.

Joe: I think the woodworkers should have said goodbye several sections ago.

Abram: Because now he owns the Woodhouse. Makes sense.

Joe: Much of his property had been developed into farmland, but other things. They also had mines, and there were even villages on his property with many of the residents working directly for him.

Joe: His dad Thomas had been a little bit of a tinkerer, so one of the things that his dad had built was greenhouses, where Thomas had grown pineapples to give to King George as gifts. Why pineapples? Because it's almost impossible to grow pineapples in Britain. And so the fact that he was able to grow them in his greenhouse was very impressive, a gift worthy of a king. Also, remember pineapples used to be like this huge status symbol. Nowadays pineapples are considered just nothing, but a long time ago pineapples were a very fancy fruit.

Joe: In all, the estate pulled in 40,000 pounds of revenue a year, or about $9.1 million today. On May 13th, 1751, Charles officially turned 21, and all of this became his in a very legally binding sense. Sure, his dad had died less than half a year ago, but Charles decided to throw a gigantic, gigantic party to end all birthday parties.

Joe: It was a two-day event. Abram, how many people do you invite to your birthday parties?

Abram: Five to ten.

Joe: Okay. He invited 10,000 people to his party.

Abram: So that means if I invited one person, he'd invite 1,000?

Joe: Yes. But guess what? Of those 10,000, only 3,000 were allowed in his house.

Abram: Huh?

Joe: So there was like 7,000 lesser friends and 3,000 greater friends. And the lesser friends just had to play with all the party games outside, but the greater friends could come in the house and play the party games in the house.

Abram: That seems unfair.

Joe: The total bill for this party is at least $120,000 today. Charles was now an adult. The young man, prone to rash decisions and sleeping around Europe, had announced his adulthood with one of the largest parties that anyone had ever seen. What could life be for a young noble that seemed to have no cares in the world?

Joe: Over the next couple of months, Charles, the new Marquess of Rockingham, put his life together. In July, he got his father's role as the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Unlike so many other Lord Lieutenants who treat it as an honorary role, Charles, he was going to take it very seriously, as we're going to see.

Joe: He was also elected a Freeman of Doncaster. I have no idea what that means.

Abram: Probably something related to Doncaster, I assume.

Joe: A Fellow of the Royal Society and even a Commissioner of Sewers for the city of York. I cannot imagine that job being very glamorous, but the point was that he was given important roles in local government.

Joe: On February 26th, 1752, he married the now 16-year-old Mary Bright. How old's he? Like 22? This was a love match. But she was also rich, and they got 60,000 pounds of her fortune, plus about five more miles of property in Yorkshire. Because he was such an important noble, his wedding was officiated by the Archbishop of York himself, Matthew Hutton.

Abram: Yay!

Joe: Mary's going to end up as a key advisor for Charles, more than just a wife. She'll be his secretary, she'll be taking business meetings, and she's going to talk a lot about how little she fits in among her female friends and how much she loved politics and helping to run the estates. If she'd only been born later, maybe she would have had some more opportunities.

Joe: Since we know he's eventually going to be Prime Minister, we know he's going to have to enter politics. But before that, we need to have a very small diversion.

Rockingham, Vermont

Joe: On December 28th, 1752, Charles received another gift: the town of Rockingham. Or rather, the town of Rockingham was chartered. This was that ambiguous area that we talked about in William Cavendish's episode. Vermont didn't exist. New Hampshire said it was theirs. New York said it was theirs, and they liked to fight.

Joe: As part of this ongoing dispute, New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth chartered many, many, many, many towns in what he thought of as western New Hampshire, all with the intention of keeping New York from laying claim. Of course, it was all on paper because nobody lived here yet. In fact, where this town is, there weren't even any Native American tribes living in what is now the town of Rockingham.

Joe: Every time we've done a town that was founded by Benning Wentworth, pretty much everyone said that he was related to the Prime Minister, and that includes this one. And this one, I'm kind of willing to believe because Benning Wentworth might be related to Charles Watson-Wentworth, but I traced it all the way back to 1500, and I can't find any connection. Benning's family was from Lincolnshire. The Watson-Wentworths were from Yorkshire. If they were related, it was a long time ago.

Abram: Well, Lincolnshire is right south of Yorkshire, so I think probably they're distantly related, but maybe you have to go back to like the 1200s to get it.

Joe: Yeah, I think so too. So this was actually the second charter of a town here. Massachusetts tried to found a town called Goldenstown here in the 1730s, but no settlers moved there. And then when Massachusetts lost this territory, that charter essentially just disappeared.

Joe: We're sitting on the Connecticut River, and Rockingham is going to be famous for having one of the very few bridges across that river, although that's not going to be built till 1785. So this will become an important town along the road leading west into what will become Vermont and upstate New York. Everything west of the river is now Vermont, everything east is now New Hampshire. But at the time, that wasn't the case. I told that whole story in the Cavendish episode. I don't really want to go through it.

Joe: The first settlers here are disputed. The official founder was a guy named Benjamin Bellows. And in fact, we are in the village of Bellows Falls here, which is named for him.

Abram: Which is surprisingly big. Which is nice, actually.

Joe: But Benjamin never lived here and just lined up the settlers. In fact, he also lined up a lot of settlers for Walpole, New Hampshire, for some reason. Walpole-y. He had no love of Prime Ministers, so I have no idea why. It just happened to be coincidental.

Abram: I assume he does actually have a vote for Prime Ministers.

Joe: Three men from Northfield, Massachusetts were the first settlers in 1753, but the outbreak of the Seven Years' War caused them to leave, right? The area was too remote to be defended. There were no forts. Both the French and Native American tribes would raid into this area, and so they all fled for their lives. Some of them returned in the 1760s once there was a stronger British military presence. And by 1765, there were 25 families living here. And by 1771, there were about 50 families or about 225 people. But today, Rockingham, I mean, it just has about 5,000 people.

Joe: That's a quick diversion. We need to get back to Charles Watson-Wentworth.

Entering Politics

Joe: Shortly after his birthday, Charles took a seat in the House of Lords for the first time. On March 17th, 1752, he gave his first speech. The topic was dear to the young Marquess, about what to do with the land that was seized from Scotland in the 1745 Rebellion. Rockingham wanted to give it back to the Scots, but only the people that did husbandry and handcrafts, and keeping it from the Highland Scottish tribes that might rebel again.

Joe: How do you think the speech went, Abram?

Joe: Abram just gave a thumbs down. You know, this man who's really good at partying, turns out not that good at speaking. The speech went over badly. He was accused of being uninformed, of speaking above his seniority, and quite frankly, just not being very good at it.

Joe: It was so bad that his cousin William Murray, the Solicitor General, forced him to take on a tutor for a four-month course learning about statecraft, about the history of the Greeks and the Romans and modern political history and everything that he needed to know to be a successful member of the House of Lords.

Joe: What do you think Charles did?

Joe: Abram is dancing. And in fact, Charles pretty much refused the lessons. Much like Charles II, he loved to party, and he solved this by simply avoiding giving speeches after this point, preferring instead to influence decisions behind the scenes.

Joe: Now, later on, he will end up being quite a good politician, even a good speaker, but it's pretty clear that he wasn't an academic. He wasn't a student. He wasn't the type of person that was, at least at this age, interested in this at all.

Joe: Instead of being given a role in government, Charles was made a Lord of the Bedchamber to George II. That's gonna give him some direct access to the king, but he doesn't need to be there all the time. Like, every now and then he'll show up, he'll help the king get dressed in the morning, and then, you know, he'll leave and go back to Yorkshire.

Joe: As he became deeper and deeper into politics, he became a sponsor of the Whig Club in York, which renamed itself the Rockingham Club in his honour.

Abram: When? After he dead? No, immediately.

Joe: He's like, I want to be—

Abram: Is he still considered a hero?

Joe: He is still considered a local hero, but he's also—

Abram: He's no longer as, like, nationally known.

Joe: Yeah. I mean, he was a hero in 1745. It's now close to 1755, 1753. And the bloom on that rose has pretty much worn off. But at this point, he's a rich party guy. In fact, he's the rich party guy that doesn't always make good decisions.

Joe: In the election of 1753, he decided to go up against Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles. Rockingham put his own candidate up for an election in Yorkshire in a borough that Newcastle thought was his. They ended up fighting over it. Charles did it all wrong, at least according to them. He actually campaigned directly for his candidate, which was seen as beneath a Marquess. He announced it at a horse racing track because, or he wanted to announce it at a horse racing track because that's the type of guy he was.

Joe: And in the end, Thomas Pelham-Holles won. He managed to convince his candidate, don't even go against me. If you let me win this time, I will give you a seat in the future. And so in fact, his friend did get a seat in 1759, and pretty much Charles was just warned. You're a Whig. Don't go against the Whig establishment.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Charles is never gonna make that mistake again. Charles was scolded by his uncle who said, quote, "if you meet disappointment in any political affair, resent it not." Like, don't feel bad that you lost, but don't do that again.

About Charles

Joe: Before we get too far in his life, let's look a little closer at how the party boy Rockingham was shaping up as an adult.

Joe: Despite his challenges with education, Charles seemed to have a knack for practical engineering and business. He expanded his dad's special greenhouses, added in a new heating system that apparently he designed himself. He was able to grow oranges and peaches, which aren't supposed to grow in Britain. And over the next several decades of his life, he's going to develop a botanical garden at the Wentworth Woodhouse that'll have 380 varieties of plants.

Abram: Yeah, at this point the woodworkers are long gone.

Joe: I don't know where they went. They were around for hundreds of years and now they disappeared.

Abram: No, it was that their descendants came. Ah, got it.

Joe: So over the years, he'd also built a small zoo on his property to include exotic birds, bears, deer, moose from America. And he even tried to raise camels from the Middle East, but none of them lived very long. He even put a moose in his house in London.

Joe: Like his father, Charles refused to enforce all the anti-Catholic laws in his lands. Although he and his wife were strict Anglicans, he was living somewhere where Catholicism was more prominent, and he was respectful of his Catholic neighbours. His wife did frequently complain that he was, quote, "most negligent" in regularly attending religious services, blaming it on his "too worldly disposition." I think he didn't go to church because he was too busy partying, but maybe it's his worldly disposition.

Joe: If there is one thing, however, Charles Watson-Wentworth is known for outside of his political life, it is horse racing. He loved to watch races. He loved the business of races, and he loved raising racehorses. Whenever he wasn't needed for Parliament or for other business, Charles would be at the races. He especially loved the Guinea Classic races in Newmarket. He liked the Chester races. Whenever possible, he would conduct his—

Abram: Which races did we meet Frederick at?

Joe: That's a good question. It wasn't this one, but it was probably pretty similar.

Abram: Why are horse races so popular? They didn't have TV yet. So is this like the TV?

Joe: Pretty much. I mean, it's like a reality TV. You know, you just go there, you watch horses run around, somebody wins, someone loses, maybe someone falls off. That would be interesting.

Abram: And then sometimes they die 'cause they fell on their knee and they got an infection and— Well, let's just let more blood out.

Joe: Right. But they also were betting on the races. So whenever possible, he would conduct political business at the races, and he would be known throughout his life, even as a Prime Minister, for someone who would mix the business of state with the racetrack.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: In fact, in 1754, he built a subscription-based grandstand at a track in York. He sold seats for life for any noble that wanted, they could just sit there. The prices of the seats were five pounds each, or about $1,000.

Abram: So it's— How is five pounds $1,000? Inflation.

Joe: It actually doesn't sound that expensive to me for a lifetime subscription, but whatever. He's not going to start quite yet, but by the 1760s, Charles will be building multiple stables on his properties dedicated to breeding and training champion horses. One of those stables will be able to house 84 horses.

Abram: 84.

Joe: And because of his love for horses, he was briefly considered to be the Master of the Horse for Prince George. But the politics of the situation— do you remember Waldegrave? He liked horse. Remember all that stuff around Leicester House with Waldegrave?

Abram: No.

Joe: The prince's faction going against George II. But the point is Charles turned down the position. He thought it would be too political.

Abram: Too political. Isn't that your whole goal, to be political?

Joe: Charles also loved Yorkshire. He regularly gave more than 500 pounds a year for charities, including hospitals and schools.

Abram: I wouldn't want to give dollars to their hospitals.

Joe: And in 1755, he was appointed the Vice Admiral of the Coast of Yorkshire. He's 25. Rockingham took these responsibilities very seriously.

Joe: In 1757, they had something called the Militia Act Riots. We haven't talked about these before, but at the start of the Seven Years' War, they had a draft. You know what a draft is, right, Abram?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: So many people didn't want to be in the draft that they started to riot. And then this was made worse because the cost of grain was going up, and so there were food riots and draft riots. The one-two punch was causing a lot of problems for Yorkshire.

Joe: So Charles dealt with it himself, and I think it shows off the way he was maturing as a politician. So he offered a bonus of one guinea for anyone that joined the militia. They would also get seven pounds when they completed their term of service.

Joe: Charles could have called on government troops to bring down the riots, but he knew that the military would not be gentle to Yorkshire, either the town or the people that were rioting. So he headed to Sheffield himself. He commissioned 10 constables. He built his own armed group of volunteers. He arrested the ringleaders of the riots. They had the trials at his house. I don't know how legal that is, but it underscores just how important Charles was to Yorkshire and to putting down the rioting.

Joe: Charles was the only Lord Lieutenant to put down the riots on his own without resorting to using government troops or just letting the rioters burn things until they got bored.

Joe: It was probably for this that Charles was given the Garter. So he is now a Knight of Undies.

Abram: He's a Knight of Undies!

Joe: By George II. Yay! Charles continued to lead the local militia as it was needed in the Seven Years' War and beyond. He would eventually refer to himself as the Brigadier General of the militia.

Abram: Brigadier?

Joe: And I guess when you're paying for it, you can call yourself whatever you want. However, as we approach 1760 and the death of King George II, Rockingham's career is about to take a new direction.

Hitting Rock Bottom

Joe: Abram, with the ascension of George III, you probably remember, times became really difficult for the Whigs, and especially those like Rockingham that had been primarily supported by the Duke of Newcastle. 'Cause remember, Newcastle became a little bit of a mascot for Bute and didn't actually have any power, and then Bute came in, and then Grenville.

Joe: Charles actually encouraged Newcastle, told him, "Look, you are being abused here. Don't serve as a Prime Minister in name only. Just resign." But Newcastle did not resign, and he did his best to hold the government together even as his own power diminished.

Joe: Charles also didn't resign, and he remained as a Lord of the Bedchamber for George II. So he was for George II, and he was appointed the same for George III.

Abram: You mean George II and III?

Joe: I meant George II and III. Sorry.

Abram: Because George I died before he was born.

Joe: Yeah, valid point.

Joe: The thing is that George III and Bute, John Stuart, did not like how much power people like Charles Watson-Wentworth were building in the counties. For all that I joked earlier that Charles was practically running Yorkshire— I mean, he was practically the Prime Minister of Yorkshire— the king actually saw this as a threat.

Joe: Bute quickly replaced some of Rockingham's appointments in Yorkshire just to show him that offices were to be given to people that were supported by the king, not that were supported by the locals. Charles's uncle Henry Finch was replaced as a Surveyor from Yorkshire, just a few months after George came to the throne, for example.

Joe: Charles, he didn't want to go against the king. He didn't want to go against Bute. He was embarrassed by these changes. And later historians wondered why, why didn't he go against them? There is at least the supposition in some of the sources that John Stuart was dangling the offer of an Irish Dukedom. Because remember, he became an Earl in Ireland. And John Stuart might have been offering him to become a Duke in Ireland if he was, you know, quiet. I don't know if that's true.

Abram: But that's their way of just expelling people. Well, no, he wouldn't become the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

Joe: Like, he wouldn't have gone to Ireland to run it. They would have simply said, "Here, if you don't fight the changes we're making, we're gonna make you a Duke in Ireland." Anyway, I don't know how good that was, but it is true that for the most part, he didn't push back. Other Whigs at the time also weren't pushing back that hard yet.

Joe: Perhaps because of all the stress and losing some of his power, this is also a difficult time for Charles physically. Perhaps because of the stress, that old complaint that he was talking about, those medical issues, had resurfaced, and they were made worse probably because his mother died and everything was just rough. He began to exercise less. He stopped going hunting. He gradually became a more sedentary person, and he spent a lot of time in Bath. Sometimes he would go to Bath for months at a time, recovering from whatever illness he felt he had at the time.

Abram: Was Bath the illness place?

Joe: Bath was the illness place, and we've seen lots and lots of people go to Bath.

Abram: Why is it the illness place?

Joe: Since the Roman times, Bath was seen as healing waters. So people thought that the waters at Bath either magically had healing powers. I don't think they believed that by the 1700s. But it was a spa that you could go to and relax, and you would feel better. A lot of our Prime Ministers have done it.

Joe: Remember that Newcastle, he tried a gesture. He tried to arrange to have all of his ministers resign at the same time to show the king and John Stuart just how important he was.

Abram: Yeah, but then that failed.

Joe: In Newcastle's case, it failed so badly that all he succeeded in removing from power was himself. Charles Watson-Wentworth, Rockingham, he was part of this. He decided that he would be the first to resign. So a day before everyone else resigned, he went to George III himself and personally told George III that he was leaving.

Joe: Now, one of my biographies that I read blamed Rockingham for all of this, Charles, for all of this, that he gave the idea to Newcastle to try mass resigning. I don't know whether that's true. He was certainly the first to resign, but I don't think it was his idea. Remember that Henry Pelham tried the same trick as Newcastle did, and that worked. I still think that Thomas Pelham-Holles was just copying his brother.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Newcastle was fading in the Whigs. They just tried to mass quit. We know that John Stuart and George III did not take very kindly from this. In punishment for that act, George III removed Charles from all of his appointments. He was no longer the Lord Lieutenant of West Riding of Yorkshire. He was no longer the Vice Admiral. Every one of his government jobs, bam, bam, bam.

Abram: What about the Ireland one? Was that one also removed?

Joe: Well, he still remained the Earl in Ireland. Like, they didn't take away his peerage. They took away his jobs. So essentially, all he would be was a rich guy out of power.

Abram: Why'd they punish him?

Joe: Because he was part of the mass quitting that—

Abram: Did they punish everyone else?

Joe: They punished everyone. This is, remember, the Massacre of the Pelhamite Innocents. We've seen this in a couple of our episodes where George III basically mass-fired lots and lots of Whigs, started by Newcastle trying to say, all of my people will resign if you don't listen to me. And then they all resigned. And then George is like, "Resignations are not enough. The rest of you are fired too."

Joe: Essentially, at this point, Charles, he's just a rich guy completely out of power. And now he had all the time in the world and plenty of reason to begin thinking about what his life in politics would be, what a successor to Newcastle would look like as a leader of the new Whigs, and how he could personally someday topple Bute and Grenville.

Joe: And that's where we'll end it today. Charles is at his lowest point, but he's making a plan and he's going to come back soon. He's not even Prime Minister yet.

Abram: And we'll be back soon in like two weeks.

Joe: But in our next episode, Abram, he's going to be Prime Minister twice.

Abram: I can't believe it. I can't.

Joe: Well, the script is already written. That's definitely true. We just need to decide where we're recording it. Okay. Anyway, Abram, did you have fun in our little adventure today?

Abram: Yes, I did.

Joe: I had fun with you. Let's go get some mini golf.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: So with that, we're signing off for the day. Say goodbye, Abram.

Abram: Bye.

Joe: Goodbye.

Bibliography

Joe: We have more than the usual number of thanks to do today. First, I want to thank Charlie and Lauren at Rockingham Hill Farm. You have a great venue and we appreciated the opportunity to record there.

Joe: Unfortunately, circumstances and weather did not allow us to finish recording there today, so we have to give a second thank you to the staff at the Rockingham, Vermont Free Public Library. You were very kind to two bedraggled podcasters who came in from the rain without an appointment. They even closed their plant sale early this afternoon so that we could finish recording in their meeting space, and for that I am very grateful.

Joe: Well, we also didn't finish recording there either because the library had to close, so I suppose I should thank the staff at The Hungry Diner in Walpole, New Hampshire, both for the yummy lunch and for not calling the police on us when we finished recording our episode in your parking lot.

Joe: And like, score, we got an extra Prime Minister town in the bargain. Walpole, New Hampshire was yet another Benning Wentworth grant, so you don't need a full town section for that at this point.

Joe: We have two key sources for this episode: "Rockingham and Yorkshire: The Political, Economic, and Social Role of Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Second Marquess of Rockingham" by Marjorie Bloy in 1986. This is Bloy's unpublished doctoral thesis, as digitized and provided by core.ac.uk. We also use several other of her articles in various journals. She seems to have spent a decent amount of her academic career researching Rockingham, and I loved that she cares so much about our favourite little— well, not so little— Marquis.

Joe: Our second source is "The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham" by Ross J. Hoffman, published in 1973. We also used a lot of smaller sources, including two books on the history of Rockingham, Vermont, although I did end up trimming most of that because it's getting a little repetitive with the similar Vermont histories that we've already discussed.

Joe: I hope you enjoyed our episode. The script for Part 2 is done already, and I am looking forward to recording that and ranking him with Abram in the next few days. As always, our editor is Sam Cunningham. You can find him as Sam_C_Productions on Fiverr. We'll see you soon.

Abram: I think it is a good idea to record in here, I guess.

Joe: I'm enjoying it. I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but we're doing it. Listen to the pitter-patter of all this rain. What were we thinking trying to record in here? When I started podcasting, I never realized that the weather was going to be such a factor.

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