Welcome to Prime Factors where we review each UK Prime Minister from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer. We discuss their biography, highs and lows, and then rate them on a scale designed by a 10-year old before awarding the ultimate prize: Are they ”Known” or an ”Ice Cream Cone”?
Episode Transcript
John: Hello, this is John from Prime Time. This episode is the second part of our Prime Time Prime Factors special joint episode. To listen to the first part, please go to wherever you get your podcasts and search for Prime Factors, or you can visit primefactorspodcast.com. This episode will make a lot more sense if you listen from the beginning. Welcome to Prime Time. This week, grand unified episode.
Rob: We are Prime Time and Prime Factors in the same city.
Abram: Prime Time Factors.
Rob: Prime Time Factors. Prime squared time factors.
Abram: I'm Abram, and I'm here with my dad.
Rob: I'm Rob, and I'm here with my John.
John: We are unfortunately lacking the third member of our group, Kess, because she is on the continent. But she is here in spirit because she's written some questions for us.
Joe: I should at some point tell you that I am Joe, because I have never introduced myself in a single one of our episodes.
Rob: We are currently in the same city, as Joe and Abram have come across the Atlantic, and we are in London together. And now we are recording this special episode.
John: In terms of the format of this episode, this is actually going to be two episodes. We're gonna briefly talk about each of the prime ministers, perhaps give a brief explanation as to what they did, compare our scores, in particular, whether or not they got the coveted—
Abram: No or ice cream cone.
John: Or—
Rob: Write-on or write-off.
John: After that, we'll— or possibly interspersed with that, we'll do a little bit of a quiz. Perhaps we've got one question about each prime minister, so it might be good to sort of work them all in as we go along. All right, who comes next after the Duke of Newcastle? Or I suppose it was in between the Dukes of Newcastle.
Abram: Generally before the Duke of Newcastle.
John: Absolutely.
Abram: Cavendish?
John: Yes, it is William Cavendish. Although of course my list says the Duke of Devonshire, because such things are important to us.
Abram: So that means Cavendish/Devonshire.
John: Yep.
Rob: Abram, are you ready for Devonshire's Um, Historically?
Abram: Okay.
John: Henry Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, was one of our youngest prime ministers, resigning the post of First Lord of the Treasury at 37 and dying in Spa in modern-day Belgium at 44.
Abram: Buzz. Historically, it's William Cavendish.
John: He absolutely is. He was, I think, the 8th William Cavendish in a row. Yes, 4th Duke. Something like 8th.
Rob: Absolutely.
John: So what do you remember about William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire?
Abram: I would say Cavendish made the war slightly better, unlike Newcastle, who didn't really. And since he's neutral, we thought he was a bit below average in some ways. He was a bit better than Pelham-Holles on his own, but not with Pitt. Okay.
John: Not—
Abram: But he didn't manage to make it better. So we gave him a bit more points.
Rob: Yeah, and you really have the Pitt factor, which we don't. We just didn't really take Pitt into as much consideration into our scoring.
John: Yeah.
Joe: With Cavendish, I mostly just remember him making the deal with the king that he could leave.
Rob: Yes.
Joe: Right? Which— That's pretty bold.
Rob: That was interesting. And he tried to smooth things out. He was very much the sort of the balm who would try to come in and— He tried to calm something down in Ireland. He tried to calm something down in Westminster.
John: I think you're saying that his "I'll be in for a specific point" is very important.
Abram: He managed to do his purpose. Unlike when Pelham-Holles was alone, Cavendish managed to keep the effort stable instead of below. And he did all that he set out to do.
John: Yes. He also, it's important to remember, would absolutely have had a political career if he hadn't died. More of a career if he hadn't died in his 40s.
Abram: I think that there's a decent chance that he would have been invited again for a year during like some future struggles if he died in his 60s instead of his 40s.
John: I think that he absolutely would have been Prime Minister instead of Rockingham. At least according to some of the things I've read. Because he and his pals, including Newcastle and the kind of old guard Whigs— and they were essentially brought back in by the Duke of Cumberland. But they were all too old. Rockingham was in his 30s, I think, when he became Prime Minister. Whereas Newcastle was too old to be Prime Minister by that point.
Abram: And Cavendish just died. So he would have been 45, which means they would have almost definitely chosen him if he was still alive to be Prime Minister again.
John: So Rockingham was immediately after George Grenville, or possibly immediately after the Duke of Cumberland, if you're going to insert—
Joe: And Cavendish was the one that was also Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for a while, right?
John: Yes, he was.
Abram: We should discuss our scores.
John: Yes, so what did you give him?
Abram: We gave him 38.
Rob: Whereas we gave him 57.8.
John: I'm now noticing that the Duke of Devonshire got a life and legacy score that was way higher than any of the others ever have. Even above Henry Pelham. And I'm not sure that I can remember why. Oh no, I think it may have been that essentially he didn't have a negative legacy.
Rob: Yeah, I think so. And also I think we just liked the fact that he realized that there was a job to do, to step into the gap, sort things out, and then leave. And I think we just quite liked that. That as a slightly casting away personal ambition.
Abram: Is it 47.9? Is that the average score?
John: Yes, it is 47.9 for all of it, absolutely.
Abram: And yeah, he kind of— he got 10 points higher than Thomas Pelham-Holles, but I think that's because he wasn't actively making things worse and he was able to make things a little better on his own, unlike Thomas Pelham-Holles.
John: So he is our top scorer for life and legacy. I don't think he comes out top in any of your things. Actually, no, that's not true. So he gets 0 points for bad personality, which along with Henry Pelham puts him at the top because it's a negative category.
Joe: Yeah, that's true.
Rob: He was nice. We quite liked him.
Abram: Yes, unlike Pelham-Holles, he was able to make things like at least neutral by himself.
Rob: Yeah.
John: And so you gave him ice cream cone.
Abram: We gave him an ice cream cone.
John: I think we agreed that he ultimately was interesting, but he didn't—
Abram: He was good, but like you can't say someone did very well if they chose to leave after a year?
John: Like, absolutely.
Abram: Yeah, if he stayed in for longer, he probably would have gotten—
John: Yeah, I completely agree. I think you're right. He—
Abram: But since he left so early before he did anything besides making things neutral in the war, like, he, yes, was better than Pelham-Holles at some things. He just sacrificed the yes for it, is kind of what I feel like.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, let's put him down as a no.
John: And that brings us to—
Abram: Waldegrave?
John: It is Lord Waldegrave, whom you've called James Waldegrave. Probably because he is called James Waldegrave.
Joe: I mean, his peerage and his actual name is the same.
John: It's very sensible. It is helpful in that case.
Abram: So wait, was he like Lord of Waldegrave?
Rob: Yeah, he would be Earl Waldegrave.
John: Sometimes it's named after a place, and sometimes it's not named after a place. And there isn't really a consistent system for that. If you're ready for the question. Yep.
John: Lord Waldegrave was a great friend of George II, but was unable to attend his funeral, that is George II's funeral, due to the delicate political situation.
Joe: Buzz. Um, actually, he was busy gambling at the time.
Abram: Buzz, he didn't say "Um, Historically."
John: I'm gonna say, given that this is borrowed from Um, Actually, I think I can't take that away from you. Um, Actually is on Dropout, and it's a great show, and please don't sue us. I did send them an email, but they never responded.
Joe: Yeah, we're too small for them. Well, we are. I don't know about you guys.
John: I know.
Joe: I think my email said, "We have literally tens of listeners." I gotta tell you, with Waldegrave, we took him so seriously, I made the entire opening of our episode a Mary Poppins parody.
John: Well, this is the thing I find— That's a new—
Abram: Places that once existed, now are somewhat empty. We can fill the seats and give them to a friend. The old serum got to new townies, they don't fit in there really.
Rob: Amazing. How long did that take to write?
Joe: There were lots of bits that didn't make it. Let's just put it that way.
John: Well, what I find impressive is that despite spending a significant amount of the episode doing a Mary Poppins impression, you were also more historically accurate than us. Because we based the episode entirely off his memoir. On the basis that he wasn't that important, so it didn't matter.
Rob: Which apparently is bad history.
John: But yes, turns out that he didn't mention his gambling addiction in there. I can't think why he didn't mention it. Well, Waldegrave was in for, was it 4 days, I think?
Rob: I think it was 4 days.
Abram: Yeah.
John: And during that time, he did not achieve even creating a government. So it's very difficult to ascribe anything to him.
Rob: Yes. So what were our scores for him?
Abram: Our score was 7.81.
John: We were rather kinder.
Rob: We gave him 21.
John: Now I think that's largely because our scoring system leans towards 50 as being the sort of median. Yeah. Waldegrave was 7.81. So that's 14.405.
Joe: So Waldegrave is one of a category that I really don't like. But his dad was really interesting. And Cavendish's dad was really interesting. But he himself is just riding on his parents' coattails, right?
John: We had the same question. Problem with George Grenville. I mean, no spoilers here, but our George Grenville episodes were entirely about other people. Interesting.
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
John: Although I did enjoy that Waldegrave wrote a memoir about his 4 days as Prime Minister in which he barely featured.
Joe: Well, he had an accurate sense of self.
John: I think also I particularly enjoyed that because it was his memoir, he could write whatever he liked about people.
Abram: People.
John: He would normally begin a paragraph with a very cutting sentence and then go into a diatribe about other things. And I think my favourite was a sentence that he said about the Queen, which is that the Princess of Wales was reputed a woman of excellent sense by those who knew her very imperfectly.
John: Absolutely. So I think we were in agreement on this one because we gave Lord Waldegrave a Lord Bath Memorial Prize, and you gave ice cream cone. And I think we've agreed with the precedent of Lord Bath that that adds up to a no, but is interesting.
Joe: Yes.
John: Although I should say, we've actually realized that we've awarded as many Lord Bath Memorial Prizes as we have write-ons. Possibly because we're too stingy and just give everybody write-off as a, you know, as a default question.
Abram: But I think we can give him a no.
Joe: Yeah, he's a no.
Rob: He's a definite no.
Joe: So I will make another observation. Waldegrave has the same sort of king's favourite as Bute does. And so he is very much of that mould instead of, you know, the power of the commons or the Lords.
Rob: Yes.
Joe: Absolutely.
Rob: The person who was clearly the most significant political player and therefore had to be in charge.
John: If you're ready for another Um, Historically— Yes.
Joe: Are you ready for an Um, Historically?
Abram: Okay.
John: Lord Bute's political career took off in the late 1740s due to a chance meeting at the races. It was raining and the Duke of Cumberland invited him to play cards.
Rob: Buzz. Historically, I think the Prince of Wales invited him to play cards.
John: Yes, absolutely.
Abram: So you finally get another thing.
John: The Duke of Cumberland did also love horse racing and did meet people at races whom he put in government.
Joe: Buzz. Historically, some biographies state that they actually met at a cricket match.
John: That is absolutely fair and a completely reasonable thing to say. I hope you'll— Forgive me for—
Joe: We don't need to get a point for that. In our episodes, we both chose to go with the horse race, because I think that's the more common—
John: Yeah.
Joe: The common story. But it's interesting that there are two distinct, completely incompatible stories, 'cause they were in different towns.
John: Yeah.
Joe: But really had exactly the same plot.
Rob: Yeah.
Joe: And which is true? I don't know.
Rob: Prince goes somewhere, Prince comes back.
Joe: Maybe neither.
John: Yeah. Absolutely. I should say that in Kess's absence, I think it's very important to remind people that Lord Bute was famous for his legs.
Rob: Yes.
John: Apparently he had great legs, and that was something that even his opponents couldn't caricature successfully.
Joe: Did he know how to use them?
John: Well, I don't know. I mean, you know, he managed to get up the political ladder relatively fast.
Rob: He certainly did.
John: Do you want to talk a little bit about Lord Bute?
Joe: You know—
Abram: Lord Butt?
Joe: I knew we were going there eventually. You know, Lord Bute, like, I love he was this theater major that performed plays with Prince Frederick's family and just— And he also sang, "Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory taroo." But when Prince Frederick died, he suddenly became this acting patriarch who went from theater geek to political manipulator.
John: And mentor in some ways.
Joe: Yeah. It's a very strange transition and transformation. I don't know how much of it's true. I mean, how much of any of this is true?
John: So I've definitely read books that said— that actually said that we didn't have a Prime Minister at this point. And that describes this as being George III's period of personal rule, essentially. And that Bute wasn't really a Prime Minister, he was just someone in the First Lord of the Treasury job, because George III was trying to rule himself.
John: And I definitely think that that's a kind of shadow that's cast over Bute, and also Grenville, and also the Duke of Cumberland. And I've yet to get to see if it affects—
Joe: But ironically, no one was burning effigies of George III. Nor could they.
John: I'm sure that he figured out eventually that that was quite convenient to have effigies of other people burnt.
Rob: Yes. But that is definitely the thing that I remember from his episode the most. Just virulent anti-Scottish. He attracted hate. And even in future episodes, he continues to attract hate. Even when he was gone, he was still just the pinup guy for dissatisfaction.
Joe: Mm. Abram, what did we give John Stuart?
Abram: 37.2.
John: And we gave him 42. So we're actually not that far off. The average is... 39.6. Well done. Good maths.
Rob: Very good.
Abram: He did his best he could. He couldn't have done much better with the Treaty of Paris. He's just overhated.
Rob: Mm, yeah.
Joe: We did enjoy in our episode that we did the Treaty of Paris as a playing card game.
Rob: Yeah, that's good fun.
Joe: And we had a lot of fun, like, looking at different ways that we could have did it, but ultimately I don't think we would have chosen something fundamentally different than what he did.
John: Yeah. Yeah, I especially feel like I got the impact of that a lot more in Grenville's era, because suddenly they had all these colonies that they needed to pay for defending. And so Bute having cut down on the number and the spreading out of the colonies and saying, "Well, let's try and keep ones that are near one another and ones that maybe we can protect," actually made a lot more sense to me at that point.
Joe: Yes.
John: Yes.
Joe: Absolutely. I will not say that Bute is anyone's favorite prime minister, but boy—
Abram: He's definitely overhated.
Joe: He's overhated, but he was a lot of fun to research.
John: Yes.
Rob: Yes.
Joe: It was really great just digging into him and just seeing the hate and seeing the history and—
Rob: And just seeing himself as well. It's very much personal, the way he ingratiated himself into the court and found himself a way to be popular. And he was a much more fleshed-out character than I think some of the other people we've done.
John: And it's a lovely fairy tale that you, you know, you're at the races and suddenly you're playing cards with a prince, and then next thing you know you're in little plays with his family.
Joe: And, you know, it could happen to anyone as long as you were also a peer.
Rob: Yes, it could happen to any earl. Absolutely.
Joe: Well, so we haven't talked about this, and we don't need to, but of course we do Silver Spoons.
Rob: Yes.
Joe: In our podcast. That's not part of the rating. It's very much a— we want to see whether they came from a moneyed family, a long-term family, or whether they were, you know, bringing themselves up by their bootstraps.
Joe: And he was a tough one because we needed to figure out— because his family, of course, I mean, he's a Stuart.
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: But he was an extremely poor Scottish earl who had to give up his carriage and be a pedestrian in London. Who would have known, right? Because he couldn't afford to pay for the horses and the carriage people. We ended up having to adjust the way that we do our Silver Spoons to say Scottish nobles, exactly half. Because clearly it doesn't mean much.
Rob: Yes, and we were exactly the same with our progress points. We sort of give points for people who come from slightly different demographic circumstances from the norm, quote unquote. And we gave it to him, even though he was an earl, because we thought that he still nonetheless didn't quite have everything that the word "earl" might normally suggest. "Earl of Scotland, who cares?" Well said, all the English earls.
John: So there were only so many seats, and I can't remember how many, but there were only so many seats in the House of Lords for the Scottish ones, whereas all the English ones got to turn up.
Joe: That's the representative peers.
Rob: That's exactly it.
John: So what did you give him?
Abram: Ice cream cone.
Rob: And we gave him a write-off.
John: I think this is a great example of where it's really hard to tell who's responsible for something, because Bute is in some ways credited with the Treaty of Paris because people hated him for it. And yet it was very much the same treaty that Pitt had had on the table a year before. Had Pitt negotiated it? Had Bute negotiated it? He was one of the Secretaries of State at the time. How much had he been involved in this? And it's very difficult to give credit to people when there are so many people who could have taken credit for something at the time.
Joe: Well, ironically, it's interesting that Bute is hated as obviously a Tory lord, but also because he wanted to end the war, whereas of course, previous prime ministers were very concerned with staying out of and then ending wars, sometimes too early.
Rob: Yeah.
Joe: So yeah, it's— he's a tricky figure.
John: But I think we're agreed that he's going to get a no here.
Rob: Yeah.
John: Because we've both been quite negative about him.
Abram: Now we have Grenville.
John: This one, I will admit, features something that showed up in our episode and not in yours, which I feel a little bad about. So good luck with this.
Abram: Did you not exactly realize it was— Well, guess what this is.
Joe: Was this in the section labeled "Stuff Dad Can't Talk About"?
John: Not quite. But Kess wrote these, and I think Kess felt that it was entirely necessary to include this because it was her favorite thing that has ever happened in the podcast.
Joe: Okay, let's—
John: So George Grenville had a terrible falling out with his political rival, John Wilkes, after a meeting of the Medmenham Monks, or Hellfire Club, at which Wilkes supposedly released a phosphorus-smeared mandrill during a speech.
Abram: Say more.
Rob: Buzz. Historically, was it that he had a falling out with the Earl of Sandwich? Yes. Not John Wilkes.
John: It was the Earl of Sandwich, the inventor of the sandwich, who was a member of the Hellfire Club. Lord Sandwich. And he allegedly is the inventor of the sandwich. And when I say allegedly, I mean it was definitely invented, or at least the story goes that it was invented for him. A very good friend of ours is from Sandwich. They're very proud of that fact.
Rob: Yes.
Abram: Where is Sandwich?
John: It's in Kent, and the word "wich" or "wick" means market or town or market town. And so Sandwich means market town on the sea or by the beach.
Joe: Wow.
Abram: That's why there's a Sandwich that's by the beach in Massachusetts, I assume.
Rob: Oh yeah, maybe.
Joe: So, strangely, sometimes yes. Because often when they were naming New England towns, they had to follow certain rules. But one of the ways in which it would happen is if there was some similarity with the British town, you know, if there was a geographic similarity.
John: So, what do we remember about Grenville that's not about the other people who are more interesting at the same time?
Rob: That sort of cuts the number a bit.
John: Francis!
Rob: Oh, there we go, yeah. We had 3 episodes on him, and he appeared in almost none of those 3 episodes. So we found everyone around him considerably more interesting, but we did have a lot of setting up what's gonna happen in the Americas. In the next few episodes with taxes.
Joe: What's gonna happen to the Americas?
Abram: I don't know. We haven't gotten there yet.
John: Who knows? Would you like a cup of tea?
Joe: Oh, we're from Boston.
Rob: We haven't thought about that.
John: Yeah, we definitely enjoyed John Wilkes and Lord Cobham a lot more than George Grenville. But George Grenville, you know, is renowned for having essentially started the American Revolutionary War, at least in terms of having kicked off some of the negative things.
John: But I do think that he was in a pretty difficult position in terms of taxation. I personally felt that he was treated rather harshly, but my co-hosts were really quite critical of him.
Joe: So the US Library of Congress considers George Grenville as the beginning of the Revolutionary era. So they don't blame Bute, they blame him.
Rob: Yeah. That is interesting.
Joe: What I love about him is that he just always feels like the disappointed younger sibling, right? And we've seen a little bit of that. Like, Henry Pelham was, you know, the younger sibling and didn't get all the opportunities that Newcastle did.
Joe: And here we have George Grenville, who wasn't even supposed to be an MP. He was just brought in because of Temple's being annoyed at Walpole. And then finally, he has an opportunity to make something of himself, and yet he never quite climbs the ladder. He's always one rung below Pitt, or one rung below Richard Temple, Grenville Temple.
Joe: So you really feel for him. In our episode especially, we played up a lot the family connection, and really tied into his kind of betraying his family in order to take the job with Bute. Which then completely fell apart, but then he became Prime Minister and whatever.
Joe: But I think that he's a really interesting character, but also comes off as being a little petty, or maybe a lot petty, and just a little bit in over his head. Like, my brother and my uncle, but not me.
John: Yeah. So the family dynamics one is very interesting, because something that we didn't really mention in our episode, or kind of glossed over, was that he was at one point in the War Office, or at least he was, I think— was he a Lord of the Admiralty at the point when his brother who was captain— was it captain of a ship?
Joe: His brother was captain of a ship, yes.
John: And his brother died in combat for the British whilst he was a Lord of the Admiralty and was supposed to be— well, not necessarily supposed to be keeping his brother out of trouble, but was very much involved in issuing the—
Joe: He was trying very hard to keep his brother out of trouble. So, I mean, it was Captain Thomas Grenville, and you can look at it in two ways. He was either trying to keep his brother out of trouble, or he's trying to keep his brother in jobs that could win him treasure. I forget the word that they used, right?
Joe: And as long as he was in these big armadas, you know, fighting the French or the Spanish, whoever it was that week, you know, you don't get to take those hauls home and, you know, use them to build your house. So he tried to keep his bro out of big combat, failed. He died. It's sad.
Joe: Yeah. And then Abram and I had to stop recording for like a half hour because we were sad.
John: It's a really— yeah. But I also think that that must have affected him quite a lot. And it's interesting that he doesn't— that he's the one who kind of breaks away from the group of the rest of the Cubs. And I could imagine a world in which something like that meant that he would stick by his family all the more. But actually, I wonder if it jaded him or made him— if it changed his attitude towards politics rather than towards his family.
Joe: Could be, could be.
John: In any case, scores.
Abram: Scores.
John: You were very harsh on him.
Abram: We gave him 11.8 and you gave him 30.2.
John: That actually works out very neatly as an average of 21.
Abram: Okay, so he got 21 points.
John: Which is— one of the lowest. One of the lowest. Waldegrave, I think, is slightly lower.
Rob: 14, yeah.
Abram: But he is second lowest. He's worse than Pulteney. Okay, but now for our yes, no, or maybe.
John: So this is where things get really interesting, because we gave him a write-off, whereas you gave him a no, but because he's so bad, he gets a no. So do you think that because he's so bad, he gets a no plus a write-off adds up to a yes, a no, or a we're going to agree to disagree?
Rob: And declare war.
Abram: Yeah. I'm gonna go with maybe on this.
Rob: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
Joe: With Grenville, I think we punished him severely because of—
Abram: We're Americans.
Rob: We were nice 'cause he's a Brit.
Abram: So this is cool, seeing the ratings of how Americans would judge them versus how British people would judge them.
Rob: Yeah, that's interesting.
John: I also think at the time we scored him, he was one of the lowest scoring. I suppose we'd had Lord Bath and Lord Waldegrave who did worse, but he's the lowest scoring Prime Minister who was in for more than 4 days. So we were being quite harsh on him at the time, but not as harsh as you. I mean, 11.8 is, again apart from James Waldegrave, the lowest score that you've offered.
Joe: Well, we gave him a ton of disaccomplishment points. That's really where this comes down to. At least from the American perspective, he takes most of the blame for the collapse of the colonial experiment in, you know, most of North America. And I think looking ahead, we had to consider that.
Joe: He's also one of the relatively few prime ministers that are well known for people that are studying American history, right? He's, he is part of the American story in a way that he isn't part of the British story. He's just another bad prime minister of that era, whereas he set the dominoes off.
Rob: Yes. Whereas for the American Independence, I mean, we have Lord North. That is the one who is remembered. And we blame him.
Abram: We blame him.
Joe: Certainly we'll get around to blaming him later, right?
Abram: Yeah, once we get to him.
John: We're gonna briefly discuss the Duke of Cumberland. We've covered him. You haven't, and I don't think you're intending to.
Joe: We don't plan on covering Cumberland. As a separate episode.
John: But I am gonna give you a statement, which is the Duke of Cumberland defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites at Culloden on the 15th of April, 1745, which was coincidentally his 25th birthday. Buzz.
Rob: I think, historically, it was the day after his 25th birthday, because he delayed the battle by a day so he could celebrate his birthday.
Joe: He did.
John: He decided that he was going to give his troops the day off for his birthday.
Joe: Sorry, Abram, I have disappointed you because we've never talked about this.
Abram: Now for Grenville's—
John: I just felt that was very fun. Yes. And then finally, we have what I'm gonna call a shiny question. So I've got 5 events and 5 decades, and I want you to match up the events to the decades.
Rob: Oh no.
John: So there's one event per decade, and they happen between the 1720s and the 1760s. So the events are, in no particular order: the death of Robert Walpole, the start of the War of Jenkins' Ear, okay, the death of Admiral Byng, the coronation of George III, and the bursting of the South Sea Bubble.
John: So then— Abram's gonna go first. Do you want to read out which decade you think each one is in?
Abram: So, 1720s, is that the South Sea Bubble?
John: That is absolutely correct, yes. Yep.
Abram: 1730s, is that Jenkins' Ear?
John: It was the War of Jenkins' Ear, yes.
Rob: Okay.
Abram: 1740s. Death of Walpole.
John: That is correct.
Abram: 1750s, Admiral Byng.
John: That is correct.
Abram: 1760s, George III.
John: That is absolutely correct. Well done, Abram, you've got that.
Rob: Oh, I got one wrong.
John: Which one did you get wrong, Rob?
Rob: I said Admiral Byng was in 1740, and then it just all went wrong from there.
Joe: I just want everyone to know, for the record, that I did nothing and I just let Abram write.
John: Yes, and Abram wrote it as quickly as I could say the things out loud.
Abram: Amazing.
John: Amazing.
Rob: I just wrote them down and then stared at them frightened. Okay, so wait, you got 5 right? And I got 2.
John: But it's just 1 point for winning, so as in they get a point for getting that right.
Abram: So that means if it was multiple, it would have been 11 to 7 would be the score.
Rob: But it's actually 100 to 70.
John: As it stands, our scores are 7 points for Prime Factors and 6 points for Prime Time. So you guys have won this round. Congratulations!
Abram: It's crazy we only had 2 yeses.
Rob: Yeah, we should actually do a quick run through that.
Abram: Walpole, yes. Compton/Wilmington, no. Pelham, yes. Pulteney/Bath, no. Pelham-Holles/Newcastle, maybe. Cavendish/Devonshire, no. Waldegrave, no. Stuart/Bute, no. Grenville, maybe.
Rob: Interesting. So, I think we are both relatively tough as podcasters, so we've only actually given 2 yeses. To Walpole and Pelham. But we have created the new category of maybe, which is a mixture of our maybes plus your maybes. We've sort of crammed into this third maybe. And we do have 2 there as well. So it's—
Abram: So we have 4 that we think didn't do awful.
Rob: Yeah.
Abram: And the rest did do awful.
Rob: 5 are complete write-offs, and then 4 have something better than no. But only 2 of those are maybes. Yeah, that is quite interesting.
Rob: And so, Abram, with the 2 yeses that we have, Walpole versus Pelham, if you had to give an uber yes, if there had to be an overall champion of this episode?
Abram: I think Pelham.
Rob: You think Pelham?
Joe: Yep.
Rob: Interesting. Why is that?
Abram: Because he's better than Walpole.
Rob: That is a very reasonable answer to that question.
Abram: Okay, so gifts.
Joe: We've brought some presents for you, and we hope that you will appreciate them in the spirit that they are given. As you know, we are from Boston.
Rob: Yep.
Joe: We have provided you a Boston bear.
Abram: And a Make Way for Ducklings.
Rob: Oh, fantastic!
Joe: This is like the Boston story that every kid has.
John: That's beautiful, thank you very much. That is so lovely of you, thank you very much.
Rob: Oh, and it includes an audio CD because I hate reading, so that's absolutely perfect.
John: That's so lovely. We have a few things for you. These are obviously from Parliament, and the colour of the bag was chosen by Abram when he chose the colour of pen at the beginning of this recording session. 2 copybooks there, as in just journals to use for whatever you like. And a copy of Peter Pan.
Joe: Oh!
John: Which is a children's story.
Joe: Thank you very much for this. We haven't read Peter Pan yet. Maybe we can read this together.
John: I want to say that it has been a real pleasure getting to know you. And I'm really, really grateful that you were prepared to come all the way over here, because I'm not sure that we would have made it the other way round.
John: It's really lovely to share this journey. And I really enjoy that you have such a different perspective on it from us. And I thoroughly enjoy listening to your podcast. So thank you very much for being so positive and welcoming, because it's been really lovely being on the show with you.
Joe: And thank you very much for allowing us to come to your country.
Rob: That wasn't my decision.
John: I did personally approve your—
Rob: No.
John: I did not personally approve of you.
Joe: Thank you very much just for being such generous, friendly rivals, and for giving us somebody that's inspiring us to continue at this and do the best darn podcast we can.
Rob: On the way here, I did discuss with Abram whether he wanted us to be enemies or friendly rivals, and he did say friendly rivals. So I think I'm glad we've got that sorted out because we absolutely are.
Rob: And I think it is, as John says, it's great to hear different perspectives, and it's great to do stuff like this, just compare and contrast. I mean, some of these prime ministers we've had exactly the same opinions on, and some we varied a bit.
Joe: Honestly, our listeners and your listeners, there's not that many of us that love this topic as much as we collectively do. And just getting the nerd out with you about prime ministers for a day has been, I think, a dream come true for Abram and I. Don't you agree?
Abram: Huh?
Rob: We'll take that as a yes.
John: This was our grand unified Prime Time Factors episode. And on behalf of our podcast, I want to thank Joe and Abram from Prime Factors for making it happen. They crossed the pond, organised a tour of Parliament, and even brought us gifts. It was both a pleasure and a privilege to podcast with them. Thank you for your presence and your presents. It was a delight to meet you and to create something together.
John: I also want to thank our regretfully absent co-host Kess for the wonderful Um, Historically questions. Kess is on the continent at the moment and sadly couldn't join us recording, but was with us in spirit.
John: Meeting with Prime Factors also reminds me to thank Rex Factor, Totalus Rankium, Pontifacts, Tsar Power, and many others in the tremendous Rexypod and history podcasting communities. They're a wonderfully welcoming and supportive bunch, and we are grateful for the trail that they have blazed.
John: And finally, thank you to you, our listeners, whether of Prime Time, Prime Factors, or both. Thanks for sharing this and making it very special for all of us. You can find Prime Time on X and Instagram @primetime_cast, write in to writeonwriteoff@gmail.com if you can spell it, or find episode notes and more at primetimepod.com.
John: You can find our wonderful compatriots Prime Factors on Facebook and Bluesky at primefactorspodcast.com, or search for Prime Factors wherever podcasts are found.
Rob: And remember, there's only one thing worse than podcasting with allies, and that's podcasting without them.
Abram: Wait, I think we should do this week, uh, What Should We Call This Episode? Uh, Prime Time Factors Transatlantic Reveal?
Rob: I think this week, What Should We Call This Episode is a perfectly good—
Abram: Yeah, I think we should do that.
Rob: Alright, welcome to What Should We Call This Episode.
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