Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

9.3 - William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham (Part 3)

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9.3 - William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham (Part 3)

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, William Pitt the Elder, Part 3. Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! 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 is episode 9.3, William Pitt the Elder, Part 3.

Joe: We have been working on William Pitt for a long time, and I'm very proud of our little trilogy, but I'm going to be glad to get to our next Prime Minister.

Abram: And then we have Lord North, so it'll take forever.

Joe: Especially because we might do a couple of Boston-based specials since we literally live in the epicenter of much of the early American Revolution.

Abram: And a special about boxes.

Joe: Abram, we don't need to do a special about boxes. That would be ridiculous.

Abram: But Prime Time did it. Are you calling them ridiculous?

Joe: In this instance, yeah. But, you know, I guess we'll just see.

Abram: Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and primefactorspodcast.com. Also on Facebook and BlueSky. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review.

Joe: Are you ready, Abram? This episode is a little bit sadder than usual.

Abram: I'm ready.

Picture This

Abram: Picture this.

Joe: "I'm ready to go in now." William Pitt's voice, once the most powerful in Britain, was slow and gruff. At the word, two men on either side rose to help the former Great Commoner up from his chair in the Prince's Chamber, a dressing room of sorts just behind the main debating hall of the House of Lords. It's April 7th, 1778, and the 69-year-old Mr. Pitt was not looking great. His face was pale and withdrawn, his eyes bloodshot, and his wig barely seemed to fit on his head. Underneath his Lord's robe, one leg was visibly swollen and covered by layer after layer of cloth. He struggled to hold himself upright on his crutch, but the two men beside him quickly grabbed him by the shoulder. The two men with him on this April day were his closest family: his son-in-law, Lord Mahon, and his second son and namesake, William Pitt. He's called the Younger, and never has that expression seemed so apt as when the vigorous 18-year-old tried to steady his father. We'll be seeing a lot more of this young man later. Together, one step at a time, the two men supported Pitt into the red-clad debating chamber of the House of Lords. This is not the golden-gilded room that Abram and I visited on our tour, but a much older room that was destroyed in a fire in 1834. Just as the House of Commons is decked in green from floor to ceiling, the House of Lords is red. Red benches, red stripes on the carpet, and red, red, red, red, red, and red robes worn by the attending Lords. Tapestries depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada line the walls, their bright green and blue piercing the red of the room and symbolizing British power. Mwahaha! As Pitt entered the chamber, men gave way and a low murmur of respect spread throughout the assembled Lords. The younger Pitt and Mahon left the elder Pitt.

Abram: Who's Mahon?

Joe: His son-in-law.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: The younger Pitt and Mahon left the elder Pitt and stood behind the bar in a section normally reserved for the noble heirs. The debate of the day was on the rebelling American colonies. First, the Duke of Richmond spoke, advocating that the American colonies should be granted independence. Others spoke too, but the prevailing debate was turning towards this idea of independence. William Pitt, agitated but proud, finally braced himself against his crutches to stand. "I thank God that I have been enabled to come here this day to perform my duty. I am old and infirm. I have one foot— more than one foot— in the grave. I am risen from my bed to stand up in the cause of my country. Perhaps never again to speak in this House." The room is silent. Pitt, indignant at his own frailty, holds his crutch overhead as two neighboring lords help support his weight. One of those lords is his brother-in-law, Richard Temple, the Earl Temple, long since no longer a Cub and now 67 years old himself. "My Lords, His Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall this great kingdom that has survived whole and entire the Danish depredations, the Scottish inroad, the Norman Conquest, that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada—" he gestured at the tapestries that surrounded the Lords on all sides— "now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Shall a people that 15 years ago was the terror of the world now stoop so low as to tell its ancient inveterate enemy, 'Take all we have, give us only peace'? Rather than deprive the heirs of the Princess Sophia, the royal offspring of the House of Brunswick, of the 13 provinces of America, he would call all the young princes to tell the House if they would consent to the loss of their heritage. The dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy. My Lords, any state is better than despair. If we must fall, let us fall like men."

Abram: Ah! At that— Let's imagine that he just falls over as soon as he says that.

Joe: At that, William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, sat down. The Duke of Richmond stood again and again pressed the room to end the war. Lord Temple whispered something in Pitt's ear. Wasn't there something he was meant to say in reply? Pitt tried to stand again, but he toppled on the bench with a cry of agony. At once the room was in a flurry of motion as lords ran to and fro, some to get smelling salts, another to fetch a doctor. William Pitt the Younger, who had been watching behind the bar with other noble young men, rushed into the Parliament chamber and to his father's side. William Pitt was still breathing, but unconscious. Together, they carried the elder Pitt into an adjoining room and to recuperate in a nearby house. William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, never again returned to the House of Lords. Abram, I have a picture to show you.

Abram: Is it gonna be orange? I can't wait to see your new orange picture.

Joe: I mean, I guess it is slightly orange. Orange picture.

Abram: Okay, Abram, this is a bunch of people wearing red and white surrounding someone.

Joe: This is a picture that will be up on our social media. This is a very famous portrait called The Death of the Earl of Chatham.

Abram: He died.

Joe: And he did not die yet. This is him collapsing in the House of Lords. He's not dead. But as you can see, they memorialized this scene in this painting. Which—

Abram: Wait, is this guy the Younger because he's not wearing the clothes?

Joe: Yes. So that guy right there is William Pitt the Younger. And I'm pretty sure that is Lord Mahon. And we see all of the lords dressed in their robes with William Pitt right there.

Abram: Why are they in bathrobes? Did they just use the bathroom?

Joe: No, those are their very special lordly robes to make them feel important. When they use the bathroom. I am pretty sure they do not wear them into the bathroom. Remember, we are the podcast that doesn't make the potty jokes. Who does? Our esteemed competition, Prime Time.

Abram: Okay, Prime Time, whenever you have a joke that involves robes, make it about bathroom robes.

A Man of the People

Joe: A Man of the People! Abram, do you remember where we were in the story of William Pitt?

Abram: No.

Joe: All right. We were just coming out of that Miracle Year during the Seven Years' War. Britain was defeating everyone, capturing lots of territories. And just when it looked like everything was going great, someone died. Who died?

Abram: George.

Joe: George II, yes.

Abram: I'm George III, says the person behind him.

Joe: Just when things seemed like they were going great, George II dies and George III comes to the throne. Now, George III didn't care for the war. He called it "bloody and expensive." And I think he meant that literally bloody and not like as a swear. So I kept it in.

Abram: So wait, do British people say "bloody" as a swear?

Joe: Sometimes, yeah. And he was much more concerned about the national debt. And he was bringing a special friend and advisor. Do you remember his special friend?

Abram: Um, the ghost of George II? No. Ah.

Joe: John Stuart, the Earl of Bute. John Stuart!

Abram: We did cover him.

Joe: Do you remember his episode?

Abram: Yeah, we put a blanket over him, didn't we?

Joe: I think so.

Abram: He's the gardener guy, right? The gardener?

Joe: Didn't he like plants? I think he did like plants. Yeah, he was like a botanist. Yes. You're right. So even though Pitt was winning, he was an obstacle to peace. Even worse, he advocated for attacking Spain and making the war even larger. Pitt argued that the Bourbon Family Compact would mean that an attack was coming, and so it was best to just attack first. Bute and King George III disagreed, and Pitt was pushed out as Southern Secretary. Prime Minister Newcastle would manage to hold things together for a bit longer, but it quickly became John Stuart's government in all but name. Now, Pitt didn't resign alone. This was also the splintering of the Cobham's Cubs that we discussed in Grenville's episode.

Abram: Splintering of the Cobham's Cubs. Ah, I demand to be paid for my actor portrayals. Okay, let's resume. So Pitt didn't resign alone, of course.

Joe: This was the splintering of the Cobham's Cubs. We discussed this in Grenville's episode. Richard Temple-Grenville, the Lord Temple, and others resigned. While George Grenville sided with Bute, and this made the government unstable and blah, blah, blah. We've covered it all in previous episodes. William Pitt was still an incredibly popular politician. He was the Great Commoner. If he started speaking out against the government, however, he could do a lot of damage. Lord Bute had a plan for this, but I'm not sure I know what the plan exactly was. Bute's respect for Pitt might have been genuine. The tokens that he and George III would offer might have been sincere gifts. They also might have been bribes or even sabotage. The key is that George III wanted to offer Pitt something to recognize the service that he did to his country. They considered a bunch of things, including putting Pitt in charge of Canada, making him the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but eventually they settled on a £3,000 per year pension and a peerage for his wife in her own right. So his wife became Baroness Chatham, and that title wasn't going to go to Pitt. That title was going to go to his kids. So from now on, all of his descendants would be nobles. But Pitt was still going to stay the Great Commoner. Even this much seemed to spark public anger, and some felt betrayed that he could be bribed like this. Now, you might be surprised, given how popular Pitt was, that anyone even turned against him. But this could have been part of Bute's plan all along. Some sources say that Bute himself paid pamphleteers to complain about Pitt's pension and to drag his name through the mud. It didn't fully work. Pitt remained popular, but it worked well enough that Pitt needed to speak out on his own account. He said, "I have accepted a pension, a reward for past services. How will that affect my conduct for the future? Shall I for that sooner betray you or my country? Shall I for that be less honest or less vigilant of the public good?" And by November, it was clear this wasn't working. We talked about this scene in John Stuart's episode as well, but there was a big Lord Mayor's banquet in London, and many in the political class were invited. Pitt arrived in a small carriage, and he was applauded by the people as their hero. John Stuart arrived in a fancy carriage, and he was attacked by the mob.

Abram: Bah!

Joe: William Pitt was still the man of the people, and Bute was still the hated Scotsman.

Abram: Why don't they like him?

Joe: Well, remember that there was a lot of racism against Scottish people at the time.

Abram: Oh, I like Scotland.

Joe: And John Stuart was a Tory and everyone else was a Whig.

Abram: Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory.

Joe: So there was a lot of reasons that people didn't like John Stuart, but everyone loved Pitt. So around this time, they built a statue of him in Cork. There was already a town, Pittsburgh, named for him in Pennsylvania, but at about this time, they named 3 more: Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Pitt County, North Carolina; and Pittsford, Vermont. And there's going to be a lot more of these in the coming years because people still love him. But although Bute failed at making Pitt less popular, he succeeded in making Pitt less aggressive towards his government because Pitt had essentially agreed with George III not to enter the opposition. There was a speech that November— Pitt was surprisingly a very damp noodle. He did not speak out against—

Abram: I'm a noodle and I'm Pitt. That's the Noodle and I'm Pitt song.

Joe: Yep. And November's speech in the Commons was surprisingly less critical of Newcastle than anyone expected. And maybe he was a damp noodle. We can go with that. There was a real question whether accepting that pension really had made him less vigilant of the public good. Even when war with Spain broke out in January, Pitt's speech was less "I told you so" and more "It's your problem now."

Abram: It's not my problem.

Joe: Well, here's what he said. He said, quote, "Now it must be the King, it must be the administration, the Parliament, the nation, army and navy who are to carry on this war, and I pray God it might be enough." He's so frustrated that he literally packs his bags, he sells his house in London, and he leaves full-time to live at his mansion in Hayes. His wife had been living there with their children, and it would be a good time to retire with his family.

The Elder Statesman

Abram: The Outer Statesman.

Joe: I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but my suspicion as to why Pitt passed so easily into retirement is that he probably was already not feeling well.

Abram: Pitt the weak noodle.

Joe: Although he had gone to Hayes, he was still a respected member of the Commons.

Abram: Why isn't he going to Bath?

Joe: He does go to Bath in a moment here. Hayes is his, like, house. I think it's a village in Kent where he has a big mansion. But whenever he's not in London, he goes to Hayes, and when he's not feeling well, he goes to Bath. Although he had gone to Hayes, he was still a respected member of the House of Commons, and he was still expected to appear for major debates. One of those debates, and perhaps one of the most important ever, was December 1762 under Prime Minister Bute, because they had to debate the treaty to end the Seven Years' War. Now Pitt was against this treaty. He had fought tooth and nail for every inch of land that Britain had captured, and to see the conquered possessions being returned to France and Spain in exchange for peace, well, it was heartbreaking.

Abram: Pitt the sad noodle.

Joe: So Pitt was desperately ill, but he still came in. Kind of like our Picture This, actually. He entered the House on crutches and with the aid of friends. He presented himself as a bandaged and broken man dressed all in black. And he even was given the courtesy of being allowed to speak while sitting, which is something that they don't normally do in the Commons. He spoke for 3 and a half hours, assaulting the government as best he could, trying to stop the treaty, and trying to ensure that the lands that he had fought for remained in British hands. But it was for nothing.

Abram: Why couldn't they remain in British feet? Because he wasn't the most powerful man?

Joe: Oh, keep in mind, Pitt has been chased out. He's not Prime Minister. He's actually conquered more territory than they can administrate. And so Bute is— he was trying to give back some of that territory in order to make a British Empire that could be maintained. Do you remember we played a card game about this in Florida?

Abram: I can't believe it's almost that time of year again.

Joe: Yeah, well, the fact that we've only gone from Bute to Pitt in the last 12 months is a little disappointing. Yeah. In the end, it was for nothing. Bute won the vote. The treaty was signed. The war ended. We might see this as like a heroic gesture. A frail man that used his last ounces of energy to argue for his legacy.

Abram: I, the noodle, hate the— I would say we can consider the noodle jokes to be the running gag.

Joe: Yes. At the time, however, some accused Pitt of faking his injury.

Abram: That was a nice actor role. How much do I get paid?

Joe: Pitt certainly had liked theatrics in his career, as does Abram, and dressing all in black might have given everyone the impression that he was on his deathbed. So I'm going to quote a little poem for you, Abram. This is a dramatization of the incident from an anti-Pitt perspective. By the way, the rhymes here are— A, the poet wasn't that great, and B, they spoke in a different accent, so I'm gonna do my best.

Abram: Okay. Today, the quote.

Joe: "The very doorkeepers it touches to see him tottering on crutches. In them a double virtue lies; they raise compassion— and a noise. The groundlings cry, alas, poor man! How ill he is! How pale! How wan! Yet such his love for us and strife, he'd rather run the risque of life than leave the bleeding land a prey to Bute, peace, and economy!"

Abram: Senate? That's it.

Joe: Mm-hmm. All right. Pitt lost. And as the poem said, "Bute, peace, and economy" won. And for the most part, William Pitt stayed out of sight and out of politics for the next 3 years, only coming to London infrequently on big business. He spent time with his children, and he especially enjoyed teaching his namesake, William Pitt the Younger, in the art of oratory and other subjects. He exchanged letters with political figures in Britain and beyond, including Frederick the Great of Prussia. Bute even asked him for advice, and Cumberland asked him for advice. He had become an elder statesman.

Abram: The elder noodle statesman.

Joe: I feel like I've lost control somehow. All right. But Pitt was not completely absent as we work our way through the events.

Abram: Of Bute, Grenville, and Rockingham. Rockingham. Okay. Let's resume.

Joe: When Bute fired most of the Whigs in government— we called this the Massacre of the Pelhamite Innocents— Pitt saw many of his former colleagues and Cobham's Cubs shunted out of office. When Grenville sought to raise taxes on cider to cover the national debt after the Seven Years' War, Pitt famously debated him in Parliament, singing the "Gentle Shepherd" song to him. And our friend John from Prime Time actually sang that for us. "Tell me, lovely shepherd, where—" When John Wilkes had been arrested for his newspaper, the North Briton, Pitt spoke out in favor of freedom of the press. He said that he didn't agree with the paper and that he hated Wilkes personally, but he agreed that the paper should be allowed to be printed. He also spoke out against the use of general warrants that allowed the government to round up everyone involved in the paper, which he considered government overreach. A couple of times Pitt was prodded here and there about forming his own government or joining one of the rotating governments of the period. For one reason or another, none of these occasions worked out, but the thought of Pitt coming back to government was never far from anyone's mind. In 1765, a man that had never met him, named Sir William Pynsent, the 2nd Baronet, died without an heir, and he gave Pitt his entire fortune.

Abram: Is Pitt rich?

Joe: Well, Pitt was already rich. Now he's super rich.

Abram: Now he's pretty super rich.

Joe: Historians aren't sure why, but it's this same admiration, right, that causes people to name towns after him and building statues in Ireland that I guess causes someone to give them all of his money when he's dead. Pitt was so happy to receive this, he even sold his beloved house at Hayes.

Abram: No!

Joe: So that he could move into the Pynsent Manor.

Abram: Why did he sell his house at Hayes?

Joe: Well, he had a bigger house now. But I want you to keep track of that because it's going to come back into the story later.

Abram: What? House Belle? No. No.

Joe: Whenever he gets new house? Nope. So George Grenville ultimately turned to the Stamp Act to pay for the debt. A move that Pitt disagreed with. Pitt, he saw a difference between external taxes and internal taxes. He liked tariffs, but he was against regular taxes, which I guess makes him very compatible with a certain thread of modern politics. I'm not sure. But as the Stamp Act began to collapse in the Americas, Pitt, quote, "rejoiced that America has resisted." He liked that the colonies were resisting. But he did have a nuanced view. Freedoms are good, but they still had to be subject to Parliament. He said, quote, "My opinion is that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over those colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised." Then Grenville was pushed out. Cumberland built his government with Rockingham as the head, and Augustus Fitzroy, the Duke of Grafton, was Northern Secretary. Remember, Cumberland died. And then Rockingham didn't command the respect that he needed to lead alone.

Abram: That's too bad.

Joe: Rockingham canceled the Stamp Act but replaced it with the Declaratory Act. Parliament chooses not to tax you, but we reserve the right to tax you in the future. Within a few months, Grafton resigned and he publicly demanded a Pitt administration. He said, "Under Pitt, I should be willing to serve in any capacity, not only as a general officer but as a pioneer, and for him I would take up the spade and the mattock." And a mattock, as it turns out, is like a digging thing, like a shovel or a pickaxe.

Abram: Minecraft reference nod. Is there a mattock in Minecraft?

Joe: No.

Abram: Pickaxes are famous for being in Minecraft more than they are in real life.

Joe: But joining a government wasn't really on Pitt's mind. On April 24, 1766, he came to the House of Commons to give what he thought was his farewell speech.

Abram: Bye-bye!

Joe: He said, "I am going on account of my health first to Bath, and then to a place still farther off. I know not when I shall return again to this House, but I wish, for the sake of our dear country, that our factions might cease. I could wish that a ministry might be fixed, such as the King should appoint, and the public approve, that in it men might be properly adapted to the employments they are appointed to, convey an idea of dignity to the government, both at home and abroad." In other words, William Pitt had officially left public life.

Abram: Bye!

Joe: Until King George called him 3 months later and asked him to form a government.

Prime Minister Chatham

Abram: Short-lived retirement, is it? Noodles don't get retirement. Pitt is forced to come back after retiring only a few months prior.

Joe: After years of waiting and several near misses, William Pitt was finally to be given the reins of government. But like everything else in Pitt's career up to this point, he had to do it his way. Abram, ever since Robert Walpole had created the role of Prime Minister— what year was that?

Abram: 1721.

Joe: And how many years earlier was that?

Abram: Uh, about 45.

Joe: Okay. Ever since Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister was the First Lord of the Treasury. Every Prime Minister we discussed had that honour: Walpole, Pelham, Bath, Newcastle, Devonshire, Waldegrave, Bute, Grenville, and Rockingham.

Abram: What about Spencer Compton?

Joe: Oh my God, I forgot Spencer Compton. Oh no! I guess everybody forgets Spencer Compton.

Abram: You forgot Spencer Compton! Trial! You committed the crime of forgetting Spencer Compton. What's your defense?

Joe: My defense is that everyone should forget Spencer Compton.

Abram: Guilty! Spencer Compton training!

Joe: But Pitt wasn't feeling well. He had just tried to leave public service only a few months earlier, and even the stress of forming the government took its toll. He started meetings to fill the cabinet on July 11th, but by the 14th he had gotten so ill that he had to take a break. And he actually moved into a cooler house because the summer heat in London was too much.

Abram: It's so cool looking.

Joe: No, no, no, not a cooler looking house, like a house that was physically not as hot.

Abram: It's so cool looking.

Joe: I don't think you get it. All right. So instead of giving himself a difficult day-to-day job like the First Lord of the Treasury, he gave that job to Grafton, Augustus Fitzroy. And instead, he took the almost honorary role of Lord Privy Seal.

Abram: Do you mean Lord Privy Manatee? No. Save the manatees! Yes.

Joe: And remember, if you sign up for Intelligent Speech using our coupon code FACTOR, F-A-C-T-O-R, we'll be donating any proceeds to the Save the Manatees Club. We will. All right, but back to what I was saying. He instead took the almost honorary role of Lord Privy Seal, where he's officially in charge of like the King's seal, right, for signing letters and things.

Abram: You mean his manatee?

Joe: Nope, we did the manatee joke. We don't need to do it again. And that role would come with a catch, and we're going to get to that catch in a moment. There was a precedent for the elder statesman of the administration to get Privy Seal, and that was the role that Newcastle had taken in Rockingham's administration. But this is the first time that they would have Privy Seal be sort of the Prime Minister, and indeed the only time. Pitt did have an important choice with that First Lord job. He needed to give it to Grafton. And by giving it to Grafton, Augustus Fitzroy, he was choosing someone with less experience and ambition. Richard Grenville-Temple, the Lord Temple, had wanted it, but they couldn't agree to which other roles Temple would be allowed to fill, and Pitt feared that giving Temple so much power would basically make him Prime Minister, and Pitt wanted to be in charge. Like his one-time mentor, Henry Pelham, Pitt wanted to build a "broad-bottomed" ministry, one that he said was of "measures, not men." He would select ministers based on their qualifications and not their politics. But this turned out to be a lot harder than under Henry Pelham, because right now the Temple faction, the Grenville faction, and the Rockingham faction all hate him and they all refused to work with him. So instead of building a broad-bottomed ministry of the best Whigs, he built a broad-bottomed ministry of the people that would work with him.

Abram: Were there any Tories in it?

Joe: I believe there were some Tories. So for our purposes, Charles Townshend is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. And American history people just sat straight up in their chairs. Don't worry, we'll get to him in a sec.

Abram: Who? Charles Townshend.

Joe: Don't know him.

Abram: You will. And you'll be studying him in history class, I promise you.

Joe: William Petty was the Earl of Shelburne. He's the Southern Secretary. Put a pin in him. Henry Seymour Conway would be Northern Secretary.

Abram: Don't put a pin in him.

Joe: And there's other names, but let's just focus on them for now. But here comes the big surprise. William Pitt could not be the Lord Privy Seal because he wasn't qualified. It was not a law, but it was a tradition that only a peer could be Lord Privy Seal. But this was part of his plan.

Abram: Was he an apple, not a pear?

Joe: The Great Commoner was going to accept a peerage for himself. William Pitt was publicly announced as the Earl of Chatham and the Viscount Pitt of Burton Pynsent on July 30, 1766. For all that the people were angry but forgiving when Pitt had arranged for his wife to be a Baroness, it was a thousand times worse for him to be an Earl.

Abram: Why?

Joe: He's the Great Commoner. He is the leader of the House of Commons. Now he is just another stupid noble.

Abram: Now he's just another stupid noble.

Joe: So this was also going to take him out of the House of Commons, as I said, and put him in the House of Lords. He didn't even need his enemies to skewer him in the press this time. One person wrote, quote, "I will be plain and honest with you and tell you numbers of the first people here are displeased at your accepting a peerage, as you could not be more honourable than you were." And then another wrote, "There is still a twilight of popularity around the great peer, but it fades away every moment, and the people here are growing quite out of humour with him."

Abram: He's just this stupid noble now.

Joe: I can't believe it. When it was announced that Pitt would be Prime Minister, the City of London planned a dinner and celebration called an "illumination" for Pitt.

Abram: Do you mean an elimination?

Joe: An illumination.

Abram: An elimination.

Joe: So this is an event where they would—

Abram: Light a lightbulb.

Joe: Well, this was well before lightbulbs, but everyone would put bright candles in their windows so that the whole of the City of London would be lit up as close to light-up night as they could do.

Abram: Do you mean lit-up night?

Joe: Oh, we don't have light-up night up here, do we? When I was a kid, every year there would be light-up night, and there'd be a night where all of the lights on the buildings in Pittsburgh would be lit up. And we would go up to Mount Washington and look at the whole skyline being just lit by all of these lit-up skyscrapers.

Abram: Why don't we have that here?

Joe: I don't know. I think it's because there isn't really a viewing place, 'cause Boston's pretty flat. In any event, it didn't matter because the city said, "Oh, you're a noble now," and canceled the dinner and canceled their light-up night. And in a very literal sense, the Earl of Chatham did not glow like William Pitt.

Abram: A Great Commoner. Dun dun dun!

Joe: The kindest source I found said that this was a strategy. That Pitt could now go head to head against Rockingham, Newcastle, and Temple directly in the House of Lords.

Abram: But he's a weak old man! I doubt he'll ever get to argue against them.

Joe: Yes, I don't give this any credit. I just think that he felt he was owed a peerage for his service to his country. I can't disagree with it. But this meant that they needed a leader of the House of Commons. And with both Conway and Townshend in the Commons—

Abram: And they choose Henry Fox.

Joe: The role went to Conway. Fox hates him right now.

Abram: Aww.

Joe: The Fox-Pitt rivalry is well in place at this point.

Abram: Why hasn't Fox been mentioned at all?

Joe: Because he's not as big of a player in this episode as he was in the previous one. So Conway had been Leader during Rockingham, and Pitt must have been pleased with his job. Edmund Burke called the new administration, quote, "A very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on." In other words, it's a weird fractional thing. But the first couple months went very well. One of Pitt's— excuse me, now Chatham's— first decisions was to deal with food riots across the country.

Abram: We want food!

Joe: The 1766 harvests were bad and many people couldn't afford to eat, so he banned the export of grain out of the country so that only the British people could eat the grain. This was technically against the law, but he argued that necessity required it.

Abram: Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Joe: Pitt wanted to improve the governing of India. He was against the East India Company acting as a branch of the state, basically acting as a government rather than a trading company. And he wanted the Crown to take direct control over Indian territories. This was very difficult. There was a lot of entrenched money, but he was determined to make India part of the Empire rather than controlled by a merchant corporation.

Abram: Was that why Queen Victoria would later be like the Empress?

Joe: Well, eventually, yes, but actually Pitt's going to fail at this. So he's going to try to improve the governing of India.

Abram: Don't spoil it.

Joe: As the situation with France and Spain remained volatile, he worked to strengthen Britain's claim on the Falkland Islands near South America, something that will never bite Britain. He also, for some reason, decided to make Pensacola a key fort city to help defend the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Abram: Why?

Joe: I don't know. I've never been to Pensacola. He tried to build new alliances, but Britain had upset too many other countries, and he didn't really succeed in that.

Abram: Pitt's upsetting people. Upsetting everyone. Why is Pitt upsetting people? The answer time's just begun.

Joe: So the first several months of Pitt's ministry were going well, and Lord Chatham stepped up to the Earl's Bench in the House of Lords for the first time on November 11th, 1766. But an administration that started so well was about to take a very difficult turn.

Abram: A turn for the worse.

Pitt In Decline

Joe: Just gonna rewrite. Whatever. Pitt in Decline. Whatever you want. That's fine.

Abram: Oh, it's so funny.

Joe: It's like I give you a subject and then you change it.

Abram: It's— but both of them.

Joe: So whatever. Whatever sounds good. Being Prime Minister, Abram, was a very difficult job, and whether it was due to stress or coincidence, Pitt became increasingly ill. Starting in October 1766, he began spending more time in Bath, and by 1767, he was nearly there all the time. He basically ran the government by sending letters back and forth.

Abram: Hmm.

Joe: March 1767 might have been his breaking point. Charles Townshend was not working out as Chancellor, so Pitt was making arrangements to go to London.

Abram: Boy, isn't like Chancellor like the thing we base it off of, like who's Prime Minister?

Joe: So Prime Minister typically is First Lord of the Treasury plus Chancellor of the Exchequer plus Leader of the House of Commons. But at the time, it was less formal that way.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Pitt made arrangements to go to London, but traveling there was difficult and he was forced to stop at an inn for 10 days to rest up for the remainder of his journey. And when he arrived, he was actually too ill to even meet with people, including the King. Pitt tried to replace Townshend with Lord North.

Abram: Do you want to put a pin in him? Ow! That one hurt, though.

Joe: But North refused. And if anything, this made the Townshend situation worse because he now knew that he was on Pitt's naughty list.

Abram: He's not getting presents.

Joe: But it hardly mattered. No sooner had Pitt returned from London than he suffered a near-total collapse. Historians are not certain exactly what was happening, but at the time they called it "gout of the brain," and it seemed to be a mix between periods of manic energy and absolute depression. Pitt would hardly see anyone, even rarely his wife or servants. He wouldn't answer letters. There are stories where he would just sit and stare out the window all day or at something on his table. He was seeing a doctor at this time. Many people credit the doctor for making it worse because he thought that making his gout of the leg worse would make his gout of the head better. I don't really understand that.

Abram: It was like a balancing thing that doesn't make any sense.

Joe: Well, medicine at the time was not very good.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Sometimes Pitt would be manic. One story said that he bought all the houses nearby because he wanted to make his neighborhood quieter. Another story said he hatched a plan to add 34 more bedrooms to the house, which I can assure you could not be done quietly.

Abram: So Pittville is no longer the quietest place.

Joe: Later, he became obsessed that he needed to return home to Hayes, so much so that they had to rebuy his old house and moved back in there so that he would be more comfortable.

Abram: What happened to the house he got?

Joe: I mean, he kept it, but now he—

Abram: From like the one he got rid of Hayes.

Joe: Well, when he got rid of Hayes, he moved into the house that he had been given by the guy who died. I don't think he sold that house. I think that he just didn't live there. He just bought the old one back.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: It is well known that old people suffering from memory impairment feel comfortable in familiar locations. And I've met people who were desperate to return to their long-lost childhood homes when they started having memory problems. And so it's not that hard to think of Pitt as having something like that. That said, we don't know how many of these stories are true. And why is this so upsetting?

Abram: It's a little sad.

Joe: Why?

Abram: Because it's hard to see a hero suffer.

Joe: Yeah. Pitt was healthy enough to have granted his wife Hester full power of attorney over his estates. So she could manage the family finances when he was ill. And Hester even answered some of Pitt's letters in her own handwriting while he was sick.

Abram: That's shocking.

Joe: Well, it's what they had to do. You know, Totalus Rankium has something called Opprobrium Crazium, where they give points to Roman emperors that go a little bit nutty. And I think William Pitt would actually win some points here.

Abram: But we're not Totalus Rankium.

Joe: I wish we were. So while Pitt was at his home suffering from a complete breakdown, the Chatham Ministry essentially had no leader during this period. Augustus Fitzroy, Grafton, was allowed to visit William Pitt just once, and he reported, quote, "His nerves and spirits were affected to a dreadful degree, his great mind bowed down and weakened by disorder."

Abram: Aww.

Joe: Pitt's last official business was conducted in March 1767, leaving Grafton in the Lords and Townshend in the Commons to lead as best they could. There was no one to settle disagreements, and the whole government fractured. And in that fracture, one man managed to seize control of the Commons: Charles Townshend. He was charismatic, he had new ideas, and he was well-liked. Unfortunately, his ideas were very different from Pitt's, and they were about to cost Britain her empire.

Abram: Aww.

The Townshend Acts

Abram: The Townshend Acts.

Joe: Britain had been in terrible debt ever since the Seven Years' War. We've seen that through Grenville's Cider Tax and the Stamp Act, but the problem remained. Taxes were high for everyone, and Britain wanted to more effectively tax their overseas possessions so they could work down the debt themselves and reduce the burden on Britain. And in May 1767, Charles Townshend had an idea. In a speech to Parliament, which some have claimed he was drunk for, he announced a new series of taxes that would be imposed on the American colonies. This is a very famous speech. It is known as his "Champagne Speech."

Abram: Because he was drunk.

Joe: Because he was drunk. Not the most polite name, but history does not treat Charles Townshend kindly.

Abram: Aww.

Joe: These taxes were technically allowed in William Pitt's framing after the Stamp Act because they were duties on imports, tariffs, rather than taxes. But these ideas were much larger and went much farther than Pitt might have been willing to go. But Pitt at the time was not in any condition to say no.

Abram: But wait, if he was in bed, couldn't his wife just tell him the decision, yes or no? And then he says yes or no.

Joe: Pitt was staring at his dining room table looking at a glass of water for half the time, it seems. He was really not in a position to make any statements of government. So these acts, Abram, today are called the Townshend Acts. Have you covered them yet in American history?

Abram: I think so.

Joe: These are some of the most famous acts of evil in US history. Like the Stamp Act, and then later we're gonna get to Lord North's Intolerable Acts, the Townshend Acts are another major strike towards American independence. And Charles Townshend basically set this ball rolling. The acts are simple enough. There's gonna be new taxes on glass, paper, lead, paint, and do you wanna make a guess?

Abram: Corn.

Joe: No. Close though.

Abram: Tea.

Joe: Throw the tea overboard.

Abram: Not yet, but we're getting there.

Joe: These are the famous tea taxes that are going to cause some problems in the future. They also added specific punishments for New York, which had not followed all their previous laws like the Quartering Act. And essentially they outlawed the New York Assembly.

Abram: They outlawed the New York Assembly?

Joe: What? Yes. They added specific punishments for New York, which had still not followed all the previous laws like the Quartering Act, and they essentially outlawed the New York Assembly from making any laws until Parliament said they could. They pretty much completely usurped, or at least overrode, the government of New York.

Abram: In September—

Joe: The state or the city?

Abram: The colony?

Joe: It's the colony of New York, but I think at this point there's not that much of a distinction. In September 1767, after these laws were passed but before their effects were known, Charles Townshend died.

Abram: No!

Joe: As he's going to shoulder a lot of the blame for the Revolution, let me at least say that he was never able to defend himself, and it's extremely easy to blame a dead man when everything goes wrong. He is one of the villains of American history, one of the people that we are taught about, but at the time he was supported by George III, he was supported by the Commons, Pitt wasn't around. And it's gonna be up to us in a bit to decide how much blame we give Pitt for the mess that Charles Townshend made. For the purposes of our story, I'm gonna follow one important thread from these Townshend Acts. In 1768, new British trade commissioners arrived in Boston and began to do their jobs. They were not only there to collect taxes, but to block the smuggling that allowed for untaxed goods to enter the colonies.

Abram: Can't they just enter from somewhere like in the south?

Joe: Yep, but it's much more population in the north, a lot easier. And at the time, remember, most goods were shipped by sea because there were not roads between all the colonies. On June 10th, 1768, the Liberty, a very ironically named boat, was found to have been smuggling Portuguese wine and was seized off the coast of Boston. This ship happened to be owned by somebody that you might have heard of. John Hancock.

Abram: I know him.

Joe: He's the guy with the big signature. A prominent Boston businessman, yes, who had a big signature. To say that Hancock and smuggling was popular in Boston was an understatement. Just as had happened during the Stamp Act riots, a mob of Bostonians attacked the customs house and the new commissioners. They fled on a boat into the harbor, landing at Castle William, a British-manned fort on one of the harbor islands. They begged for help, and a message was sent to London. In October 1768, 4 regiments of regular British troops landed in Boston and occupied the city. They ensured that the customs house could operate, and they discouraged the mob. But the whole city was on edge now as the line between the colonists and the British became increasingly clear. Boston was primed to explode. But that explosion will have to wait. When we get to Lord North and the American Revolution, I hope we can spend more time following this story, the story of Boston, our home. But let's just say for now that Lord North is going to have a huge problem on his hands. While this was going on in Boston, William Pitt had awoken from his slumber just enough to recognize he was no longer in charge. With Townshend dead, it was now Grafton's turn to step up and try to lead the government. Including trying to fire Shelburne for mismanaging the American situation. And we're gonna look at that in his episode next time.

Abram: Yes.

Joe: William Pitt considered fighting Grafton on this, but he had no energy and even less clout. He was in charge, but was he really in charge after not doing anything for years?

Abram: His last act was in early 1767, was he officially considered like not— in like the very beginning of 1768.

Joe: Well, officially, we're going to have to decide this at the end.

Abram: I like the Wikipedia list of this.

Joe: On the Wikipedia list, he is Prime Minister up to this point. Up to when Townshend dies. Instead, he just resigned. On October 14th, 1768, he wrote, quote, "Totally disabled, as I still am, from assisting in Your Majesty's councils, I most humbly implore Your Majesty's royal permission to resign." The Chatham Ministry was over.

The Final Days of William Pitt

Abram: The final days of William Pitt the Elder.

Joe: Abram, it is our custom not to focus too much on the events after our Prime Minister's time in office. We're going to be looking at these years when we talk about Grafton and North. So I'm not going to go into detail, but we're going to cover a couple quick points. The most important of those points, and maybe the most surprising, is that William Pitt begins to recover.

Abram: Really?

Joe: Yeah. Could have been just the reduced stress. Maybe it was just coincidence. But by the time he had emerged in October 1768 and realized, oh wait, I haven't really been governing for the past year, I think he must have been sort of coming out of that fog. One of the ways in which his family knew that he was getting better was he would start to go outside. And he began enjoying a game again. And this game is called skittles.

Abram: Do you mean M&M's?

Joe: No, I mean, the game is called skittles. It is a weird early form of bowling. It would be played in an actual alley, like not a bowling alley, but like an alley in a town.

Abram: Oh, let's find that rundown street in Brent. Okay, and it's an alley, so here goes the ball.

Joe: No. If he played in an alley, they would set up 9 pins, not 10, in a diamond shape. And you don't throw a ball. You throw a piece of wood called cheese.

Abram: Let's throw some piece of wood called cheese.

Joe: Because it would look like a cheese wheel at the pins. And apparently he liked to play this game and it was one of the ways—

Abram: You just have to find a rundown neighborhood and then you can play. I guess— you just get a random piece of wood.

Joe: It's just one of the ways, apparently, in which people started knowing that he was feeling better. He reappeared in public for the first time in July 1769 and resumed sitting in the House of Lords starting in 1770. It was in these final years in the House of Lords that Pitt developed and articulated his vision for America. Pitt admired the freedom-loving ways of the American colonists, and he sympathized with their plight. He agreed with them. He fought against many of the acts that we're gonna talk about. But Pitt also saw the colonies as an extension of the British Empire. He was willing to grant concessions. In 1775, there's something called the Provisional Act, which would've granted something almost close to partial independence, but still under a British umbrella. But he wanted Americans in the British Empire. They could be distinct. They could have different rules. They could have concessions.

Abram: They could be, like, autonomous, but still be in some way.

Joe: But he wanted them in the Empire. So on April 7th, 1778, when he went to the House of Lords to argue what would be his final point, he argued against American independence. He did not want Britain to surrender the colonies or give up fighting the French. He wasn't anti-American, but his views were nuanced. And it's for this reason that Pitt is a hero on both sides of the Atlantic. The British loved him because he championed the cause of keeping the Empire together. The Americans loved him because he was always seeming to agree with them against the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts and against the war. William Pitt is going to remain really popular in the United States. The most recent thing I can find that was named for him was 1955.

Abram: Well, so he's a hero.

Joe: We saw Pitt's collapse in our Picture This segment. You would not be wrong to notice that it was beat for beat the same as Pitt's time when he argued against the Treaty of Paris. But even if that time was partially theater, this final bow certainly wasn't.

Abram: Um, 'cause while trying to bow, he fell over and collapsed.

Joe: After collapsing in the Lords, Pitt recuperated briefly in London before being taken back to his home at Hayes. He spent his final days with his family and famously, legendarily, probably not even true, he spent those days reading famous speeches with his son, William the Younger, to help him prepare for his future career in politics. William Pitt died on May 11th, 1778. He was given a massive state funeral and was buried at Westminster Abbey. And that's a sign that his popularity had not waned with the common man, but George III refused to attend.

Abram: Why?

Joe: Well, some things never change. And after 3 episodes, Abram, our longest biography to date, probably ever, maybe Churchill will be longer.

Abram: Maybe William Pitt the Younger will be longer. Maybe. There we have it. Let's go to the rating.

Ranking

Joe: Rating. So Abram, our first category is accomplishments, and we rate him out of 20 apiece.

Abram: I feel like he wasn't Prime Minister, like, literally for that much, but when he was basically, I would have given him a 20. But since as Prime Minister, he barely did anything, it was a 4. I'm gonna go with, I would say, like, 17. Right. The part where he's actually counted subtracts a little, but I would say that's the worst of his 3 and the one that should count the least, so I'm comfortable giving him up to 17.

Joe: Okay, so he did create much of the British Empire. Actually, if you give him a 17, you gave the same to Robert Walpole. You're good with that?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah, me too. I am also going to give him a 17. Okay. Now we do disaccomplishments. We can each give him up to minus 10 for things that he unaccomplished, stuff that he tore down.

Abram: Or broke? The only thing I can really think of is that he did kind of get rid of the norm for what's a Prime Minister, but that wasn't really established yet, so I'm not sure if I can really dock a point.

Joe: So the way that I'm looking at this, we have two key things we need to think about here.

Abram: There are two disaccomplishment scores, right?

Joe: Well, we each score him minus 10 on disaccomplishment and then minus 10 on bad personality. So the two disaccomplishments I think we need to think about are him voting down the Jewish Bill, which we talked about in the last episode while Henry Pelham was Prime Minister, which would've allowed Jewish people to be citizens. And we have to decide how much blame he gets for the Townshend Acts.

Abram: I would say if Townshend was to get 10, which I think he probably would, but like for those acts, I would give Pitt like, for Jews, choosing him, I guess a 2. So I'm going to give him a 1 for that. And what's the Jewish thing? Also 1.

Joe: So you're giving him a total of 2 disaccomplishments.

Abram: Do you think that's reasonable?

Joe: Yeah, I think it's reasonable. I am going to think about this a little bit more. I think that choosing Townshend was a mistake. I think he realized his mistake.

Abram: But it was too late.

Joe: And he tried to bring in North, but it was too late.

Abram: That if he didn't, like, realize it and was too mentally unable to, I wouldn't have done anything. But since he did realize it, but it was just too late then. I feel like that shows that he probably could have done it almost a year earlier when it would have actually mattered.

Joe: Yeah, I think part of the issue here is how do we not blame him for something that happened while he was technically Prime Minister, even though he was sick?

Abram: He was sick, but I feel like he still could have told his wife, like, what to do.

Joe: I guess so. I think you giving him a minus 2 for disaccomplishments. I'm going to give him a minus 4.

Abram: I'm going to change it to 3 because, okay.

Joe: Fair. Bad personality. You go over this.

Abram: I don't have anything on my list for bad personality. He seems to have gone along fine with his wife. I couldn't find any cheating. He doesn't have any major scandals. He is like anti-scandal. He was so honest.

Joe: He's like the second Henry Pelham.

Abram: I'm gonna also give zero.

Joe: I think I gotta give him zero. You could say the Jewish thing could apply to both, but no, it already is under that. So that's the only thing I consider putting.

Abram: Our next category is how interesting his story is.

Joe: Very interesting. I could make a movie about this.

Abram: We rate him out of 10 each.

Joe: It wouldn't be like an amazing movie, but it could work. I'm going to give it— I was deciding on a 7 or a 6, but I think I'm going to give it the higher of those two. 7.

Abram: 7? I got to say, he led one of the most important wars. He had a very interesting life. I'm going to go 8. Okay. Now we have to rate his looks. The image that we are going to use is this one here. This is him dressed in sort of a red jacket.

Joe: He looks really cool in this. Doesn't look amazing. He looks like all the others, but— I love how his wig is sort of like shaded almost, not just plain white or plain black.

Abram: Yeah, well, the shadow works well on it.

Joe: I like all of his papers. He just decides to stop in the middle of work to do this. Oh, and he has a chair.

Abram: See, I think we're rating him on his looks, not on the painting.

Joe: But yeah, but still, I'm going to give this a 6. 6 is amazing, but attention to detail, I guess.

Abram: Sure. I will also give it a 6.

Joe: Don't agree with me on everything.

Abram: Believe me, I have not agreed with you on everything. And so that means that we, because for some reason we decided this was divided by 2, then that's what it is. 3. So we each rated him 3 in that category. Lifespan. He lived to 69, so he gets 6.9 points for lifespan. But now we have a bit of a decision to make. If we just take his time as official Prime Minister on the Parliament website, which is his time as Lord Privy Seal, that is 2.21 years, and we would give him 2 points. If we decide to count all the times that he was kind of Prime Minister under Devonshire and Newcastle, then that would be 6.82, which we would give him 6 points. If we decide to give just half of that, it would be 4.52, so 4 points. Or if we say that he was actually not really Prime Minister a lot of the time because he was sick, are we down to 0.6?

Joe: I think 4 points is the best one.

Abram: So you think we should give him half credit for that time where he was more or less Prime Minister, but not officially?

Joe: Yeah. Do you agree?

Abram: Yes, absolutely. That was the one that I had picked. So if we add up all of those points, he now has a score of 58.9, and he is now our second highest.

Joe: I'm surprised he didn't get higher than Henry Pelham. Why didn't he?

Abram: Why didn't he get higher than Henry Pelham?

Joe: I expected him to be like a 77 or something. He's really good. It's like a 60, but I expected him to be like a 75.

Abram: Yeah, let me check to see, make sure we don't have any math errors. So Henry Pelham— Wait, wait. We gave him 1 point more for accomplishments. We gave him less for disaccomplishments. Henry Pelham did not disaccomplish almost anything.

Joe: Yeah.

Abram: Henry Pelham also got no points for bad personality. And we both gave Henry Pelham solid 10s for most interesting.

Joe: Well.

Abram: Why did we like that so much? I mean, I liked Henry Pelham. But not that much. Well, I think 58.9. That's a—

Joe: I'd say anything above 50, no matter what, is worthy of a Known.

Abram: It's worthy of a discussion. So why don't we have our discussion?

Joe: Known or Ice Cream Cone?

Abram: Look, is this even a question?

Joe: He is— Everything is a question in the words of Phineas Bulldog.

Abram: That's true. He is one of the most well-known Prime Ministers of all time. He's one of the few that we get taught. He is the namesake of my home city where I was born. Known. He's Known. I don't think we can go any other way.

Joe: So with that, congratulations, William Pitt the Elder. You are joining a pantheon of some really fantastic Prime Ministers.

Abram: You get a Known and pretty much a 58.9%.

Joe: Minus your score. So really, really congratulations.

Mail Bag

Abram: But Abram, we have one more topic to get through tonight. So will you say mailbag as we close out?

Joe: William Pitt, I never properly claimed our podcast on Spotify. So there was a whole bunch of messages left for me on Spotify that we didn't see. And I suspect that some of you might have waited more than a year to hear the answers to these. But I'm going to go through them anyway. First, there was a note from Athan, and he says, "I know this was almost certainly not intended, but the reference to soft serve ice cream, which is often incorrectly attributed to Margaret Thatcher, was interesting." Abram, do you know the Margaret Thatcher ice cream story?

Abram: You told me a few hours ago, but since you did spoil it, I'm going to say no.

Joe: All right, we'll just say for anyone that doesn't know, Margaret Thatcher, prior to being a politician, was a food chemist. And she worked at a place that actually did work on soft serve ice cream and finding ways to inject gas into ice cream to make it softer. But the US already had soft serve ice cream prior to that invention. And so she did not invent it, but—

Abram: And it wasn't a reference.

Joe: It wasn't a reference.

Abram: It was just something I came up with on the spot.

Joe: But it is a very cool idea. We have John Hall writing in to comment on a lot of our pronunciations because we're dumb Americans and we can't pronounce stuff.

Abram: We can't pronounce stuff, can we? Apparently we're supposed to pronounce Newcastle's name as Pelham-Holles, not Pelham-Holes.

Joe: All right. I know, I'm sorry for being annoying, but we pronounce him like Thomas Pelham-Holes.

Abram: But we're happy for your question.

Joe: Okay, don't do that. That's a little annoying.

Abram: Americans are annoying.

Joe: But the point is that yes, I think we all recognize that Thomas Pelham-Holes should be Thomas Pelham-Holles. If I had known that we'd still be talking about Newcastle this long after— I might have changed that. He just died in 1768. We're finally past him. We will probably mention him a couple more times, but—

Abram: But he won't be like a recurring character.

Joe: Yeah, his political career at this point is done. The reason is that when we started this, Abram had a different educational YouTube series that he liked, and they pronounced it Pelham-Holes.

Abram: It's actually two of them, and since they both agreed.

Joe: Yeah, so with other sources that Abram loved calling it Pelham-Holes, we decided that we would keep that pronunciation. Yeah, we were really happy for your question. So he also corrects our pronunciation of Sacheverell, which I still can't say, and Carteret, as he says it should be Carteret, not Carteret. Remember in some of those early episodes I was saying Carteret?

Abram: When did you change that?

Joe: Like John Stuart, I think.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: But he's dead too. When did he die? I'm only assuming that Mr. Hall just got bored of writing down all the different things that we were mispronouncing and hasn't been updating that list. But it is great for you to write in. If you want to ask a question, please just send me a note on BlueSky. I now know how to find the comments on Spotify. Please write in and we'll do our best.

Abram: I think you already know this, but we're on Prime Factors. I'm Abram, I'm here with my dad. We've been reviewing all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer. This was episode 9.3, William Pitt the Elder, Part 3. Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and primefactorspodcast.com. Also on Facebook and BlueSky. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, subscribe, comment, and review. How do you think of our latest Prime Minister, William Pitt?

Joe: I mean, he got the Known. We like him very much.

Abram: Yeah, I'm a bit surprised he didn't score higher. He barely scored higher than Walpole, but I'm impressed with him.

Joe: All right, very good. All we have to say right now, Abram, is, uh, say good night, Abram.

Abram: Good morning. That's become a running gag, hasn't it?

Bibliography

Abram: Bibliography.

Joe: I hope you enjoyed our look at William Pitt the Elder. I am already researching Augustus Fitzroy, the Duke of Grafton, and hope to have an episode out to you soon. We will also be recording one additional Italy special in the coming weeks, and I'm lining up a few Revolutionary War specials as well during Lord North. Our specials are performing great, and in fact even better than some of our regular episodes, so I'm glad to be throwing these in as long as there is interest. I don't know how many Abram will want to do, but it should give me a chance to take him to a few historical sites around Boston. My key sources this time are The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham by Basil Williams, written in 1914, and Pitt the Elder by Jeremy Black, written in 1992. I know that the Williams book can be a little bit hero-worshipy, and I tried to offset that as best I can. If you enjoyed listening, please consider writing a review, or liking us on your favorite podcast app. Our award-winning editor is Paley Bowe of radioguru.co.uk. We love the work that he does on the podcast and hope that you'll check him out for any of your podcast production needs. Next time will be Augustus Fitzroy. We'll see if I can finish him in one episode. Until then, goodbye.

Outtake

Abram: This is episode 9.3, William Pitt the Other, Part 3. We have been working on William Pitt for a long time. I'm very proud of our little trilogy. Oh, we got to get to our next Prime Minister. Then we have Lord North, who will take forever, especially because you might do a couple Boston-based episodes since you literally live in the epicenter of much of the early evolution. Uh, there's a spidey over there. Okay, where is there a spider? Right over there. We can keep recording, I guess. So Dad's getting rid of a spider. I am scared of spiders and Dad's getting rid of it. It's right over there. There, you now have one fewer spider. Okay. Produced by radioguru.co.uk.

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