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A General Theory of Party, Opposition and Government, 1688–1832*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. C. D. Clark
J. C. D. Clark
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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Extract

England has not known a simple two-party system, or a party system of any sort. The lineage of English parties is fragmented and discontinuous. Most of the apparent continuities, like the myth of a long-standing two-party system, have been invented in retrospect by politicians and publicists seeking the justification of a pedigree. Party itself has not been a constant phenomenon, which could be defined by the political scientist and then searched for by the historian. The English experience, rather, is of a succession of discontinuous two-, three-, even four-party systems whose components both develop and relate to each other through changing conventions. Often the fiction of the ‘two-party system’ has disguised the reality of three or more parties; parties which, themselves, can be the vehicles for a wide range of issues. It is a commonplace, which was evident to Hume and Bolingbroke, that whigs and tories exchanged many of their policy commitments in the early eighteenth century; but the same suggestion has been made of the Conservative and Labour parties today. The content of a party's programme has always been almost infinitely flexible; except in respect of the questions raised by a small number of threats, challenges or problems. The existence and endurance of party systems has usually articulated the ideological polarity which such challenges induce.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 295 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

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2 Feiling, K., A history of the tory party 1640–1714 (Oxford, 1924), p. 245Google Scholar. It is debatable how far the politics of c. 1678–88 rank as a ‘party system’ in the sense used here; cf. Witcombe, D. T., Charles II and the Cavalier House of Commons 1663–1674 (Manchester, 1966)Google Scholar; Browning, A., ‘Parties and party organization in the reign of Charles II’, Transactions of the] R[oyal] H[istorical] S[ociety], 4th ser., xxx (1948), 21–36Google Scholar; Jones, J. R., The fast whigs: The politics of the Exclusion crisis 1678–1683 (London, 1961).Google Scholar

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13 Different causes can be ascribed to each of these crises; in the eighteenth century the dominant ones were often dynastic. Other disturbances which might have recast party systems did not do so for an equal variety of particular reasons.

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16 Eighteenth-century government is being deeply misconceived by the preoccupation of modern scholarship with elections, poll books, the size of the electorate, and constituency politics; good scholarship can amount to bad history.

17 For references which suggest that Namier was aware of the transition, cf. my article ‘The decline of party’, pp. 502, nn. 2, 3; 525 n. 1.

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21 Disraeli's account of tory genealogy changed to suit his own immediate tactical advantage: cf. Blake, Conservative party, pp. 3–5.

22 For just such reasons, early-nineteenth-century historians have usually misinterpreted late-eighteenth-century parties, and late-eighteenth-century historians have as frequently misconceived or neglected the parties of the first half of the century.

23 Cf. Kenyon, Revolution principles.

24 Historians’ prudent scepticism about the appropriateness of the expression ‘party system’ for these years rests on the unexamined assumption that party systems possess, or tend to acquire, similar conventions – by implication, those of the late nineteenth century (cf. Holmes, , Age of Amu, pp. 9, 345–6, 381, 403). It is the aim of this article to challenge that assumption.Google Scholar

25 Quoted in McInnes, A., ‘The political ideas of Robert Harley’, History, i (1965), 315Google Scholar; cf. Bennett, G. V., ’Robert Harley, the Godolphin ministry, and the bishoprics crisis of 1707’, E.H.R., lxxii (1967), 726–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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28 I. F. Burton, P. W. J. Riley and E. Rowlands, ‘Political parties in the reigns of William III and Anne: the evidence of division lists’, B.I.H.R., special supplement, no. 7 (1968), p. 33. The importance of whig-tory distinctions in the 1690s has been underestimated as a result of the anachronistic assumption that parties, had they existed, would have entailed party government; cf. Feiling's warning (Tory party 1660–1714, p. 287): ‘The criterion of party strength in England between 1690 and 1701 was not nearly so much the composition of the cabinet, as that of the Committees of Accounts, the Committee on Irish forfeitures, and of all the several bodies by which the Commons tried to make their will prevail....’

29 Feiling, Tory party 1660–1714, pp. 362, 382.

30 Cf. ibid., p. 424; Aufrere, A. (ed.), The Lockhartpapers (London, 1817), 1, 482Google Scholar; Holmes, , Age of Anne, pp. 379–81.Google Scholar

31 Lord Cowper's memorandum for George I, ‘An impartial history of parties’, in John, Lord Campbell, The lives of the lord chancellors… (London, 1845–1869), iv, 421 at 428–9.Google Scholar

32 Quoted in Plumb, J. H., The growth of political stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), p. 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Hill, Parliamentary parties, p. 148.

34 Lord Cowper's memorandum, cited above.

35 Sir John Perceval to [Daniel Dering?], n.d. [November? 1714], quoted in Holmes, G. and Speck, W. A., The divided society: party conflict in England 1694–1716 (London, 1967), p. 177Google Scholar; cf. Hatton, R., George I elector and king (London, 1978), pp. 126–8.Google Scholar

36 Cf. Holmes, Age of Anne, p. 417.

37 Plumb, Political stability, p. 173.

38 Ibid. p. 175; Hill, Parliamentary parties, pp. 178, 184–8. As late as 1722, Sunderland could still appeal, though unsuccessfully, to the old convention of mixed ministries: cf. Eveline, Cruickshanks, Political untouchables. The tories and the ‘45 (London, 1979), p. 9.Google Scholar

39 The Court–Country classification is now widely repeated, and adopted as a basis for the political history of c. 1714–60, even by such historians as Speck, W. A.(Stability and strife. England 1714–1760 (London, 1977), passimGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Polities’, in Pat, Rogers (ed.) The eighteenth century (London, 1978), pp. 95–6 ff.)Google Scholar and Dickinson, H. T. (Bolingbroke (London, 1970), pp. 196–7, 273Google Scholar; idem, ., Walpole and the whig supremacy (London, 1973), pp. 41–5, 80–2Google Scholar; idem, , Liberty and property: political ideology in eighteenth century Britain (London, 1977), passim)Google Scholar. Yet the source of and only foundation for such a categorization is the able but erroneous analysis in chapter ii of Owen, J. B., The rise of the Pelhams (London, 1957)Google Scholar. For a refutation of it cf. Jarrett, D., ‘The myth of “Patriotism” in eighteenth century English polities’, in Bromley, J. S. and Kossman, E. H. (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands, v (The Hague, 1975), 120–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Clark, J. C. D., ‘The decline of party, 1740–1760’, E.H.R., xciii (1978), 499–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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42 David, Hume, Essays moral, political and literary, ed. Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H. (London, 1875), 1, 138.Google Scholar

43 Hume, Essays, 1, 464.

44 Ibid. 1, 139.

45 Ibid. 1, 139, 141. For his distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘real’ parties see ibid, i, 128.

46 Quoted in Donoughue, B., British politics and the American revolution (London, 1964), p. 198.Google Scholar

47 Horace, Walpole, Memoirs ofthe reign of King George the third, ed. Barker, G. F. Russell (London, 1894), 1, 4. Walpole began that work in 1766.Google Scholar

48 Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents, in The works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (12 vols., John C. Nimmo, London, 1887), 1, 437–8.

49 Thomas Walpole's memorandum, autumn 1762, in Albemarle, Rockingham, 1, 149; cf. Devonshire diary, Devonshire MSS, Chatsworth, 14 Nov. 1762; Rigby to Bedford, 10 Mar. 1763, Bedford correspondence, iii, 218.

50 E.g. Mr Whateley to G. Grenville, 8 Nov. 1765, Grenville papers, in, 107.

51 The history of the eighteenth-century tory party is in a state of disarray. Confusingly, its latest chronicler has advanced three distinct and contradictory theories of its evolution. In one place, Dr L. Colley argued that, in 1755, ‘complications arise...from the contemporary and present difficulty of denning who exactly was a tory’, suggesting that that party identity had already suffered major erosion by that decade (‘The Mitchell election division, 24 March 1755’, B.I.H.R., xlix (1976), 82). Secondly, Miss Colley maintained that ‘toryism survived and was only extinguished by its acceptance and amalgamation in the Court of George III’ in and immediately after 1760 (‘The tory party 1727–1760’, Cambridge PhD thesis, 1976, pp. xi ff.). Yet thirdly Miss Colley claimed that ‘tories were clearly able to identify each other throughout the eighteenth century’; that the Cocoa Tree was a tory party club ‘serving a political function into the 1770s’; and that the Loyal Brotherhood continued its ‘political activity’, its membership still confined to ‘the tory group’ until’ 1833 at least’ (‘The Loyal Brotherhood and the Cocoa Tree: the London organization of the tory party, 1727–1760’, H[istorical] J[ournal], xx (1977), 80, 91). As with the whigs in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, writing the history of a single party has shown itself to be no reliable route to an accurate account of party politics as a whole – or, ultimately, to the most general features of the chosen party's own history.

52 E.g. Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents (1770), Works, 1, 460; An appeal from the new to the old whigs (1791), ibid, iv, 128.

53 Marchmont diary, 13 Feb. 1745: Rose, G. H. (ed.), A selection from the papers of the earls of Marchmont (London, 1831), 1, 173.Google Scholar

54 Cf. his speech on 23 Apr. 1733 in John, , Lord, Hervey, Some materials towards memoirs of the reign of King George II, ed. Sedgwick, R. (London, 1931), 1, 179.Google Scholar

55 H. M. C, Onslow, p. 465.

56 E.g. Newcastle to Richmond, 30 Nov. 1742: Goodwood MSS, West Sussex R.O., 1160, fo. 48; Hardwicke to Pitt, 2 Apr. 1754: P.R.O. 30/8/1 fo. 54; Pitt to Sir George Lyttelton, 7 Mar. 1754: Grenville papers, 1, 106; Walpole to Pelham, 23 Aug. 1742, 31 Oct. 1742, 18 Sept. 1743, 20 Oct. 1743: Coxe, Pelham, 1, 34, 35, 100, 103.

57 There was, therefore, no direct or simple continuity between whig assumptions of party-as-government in the 1750s and the Rockinghams’ doctrines of party-as-opposition in the 1760s.

58 Grenville diary, 10 July 1767: Grerwille papers, iv, 229; and 12 Mar. 1767: ibid, iv, 215–16.

59 Grenville diary, 28 Aug. 1763: ibid, ii, 197 at 198–9.

60 Grenville diary, 13 Oct. 1763: ibid, ii, 213; Egmont's notes on George III's letter of [22 May 1765]: Sir John, Fortescue (ed.), The correspondence of King George III from 1760 to December 1783 (London, 1927–1928), 1, 110.Google Scholar

61 George III to North, 29 Mar. 1778: Fortescue, George III, iv, 84; North to George III, 4 June [1779]: ibid, iv, 368.

62 Cf. George III, ‘Heads of my conversation with Mr Pitt. June 1765’: Fortescue, George III, 1, 123.

63 George III, like many of his contemporaries, hoped for the supersession of party qua whig and tory; but he did not come to the throne with a tactical programme for the destruction of party organisations. The anti-party devices deployed in the 1760s against the factions which then remained were already part of the technical vocabulary of the political elite: cf. Clark, J. C. D., ‘Whig tactics and parliamentary precedent: the English management of Irish politics, 1754–1756’, H.J., xxi (1978), 275–301.Google Scholar

64 John, Brooke, King George III (London, 1972), pp. 57, 80–1; Fortescue, George III, vi, 316.Google Scholar

65 Cumberland's memorandum on negotiations for a new ministry, April-May 1765: Albemarle, Rockingham, 1, 185.

66 E.g. Bute to Bedford, 2 Apr. 1763: Bedford correspondence, iii, 223.

67 North to George III, 4 June [1774]: Fortescue, George III, iv, 368.

68 George III to Lord Chancellor, 11 Dec. 1779: ibid, iv, 517.

69 George III to Lord Chancellor, 16 Dec. 1779: ibid, iv, 520.

70 George III to C. Jenkinson, 13 Mar. 1782: ibid, v, 386.

71 George III to Temple, 1 Apr. 1783: ibid, vi, 329.

72 For an example in 1812 cf. the ministerial memorandum printed in Foord, A. S., His majesty’s opposition 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), p. 443.Google Scholar

73 But cf. Christie, Ian R., The end of North's ministry 1780–1782 (London, 1958).Google Scholar

74 H. Dundas to his brother, 27 Feb. 1783: Earl Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (London, 1861–2), 1, 108.

75 It added: ‘Of this party were there a new parliament, and Mr P[itt] no longer Minister, not above twenty would be returned.’ Printed in Aspinall, A. and Smith, E. A. (eds.), English historical documents 1783–1832 (London, 1959), p. 253. The striking lack of other such breakdowns of the composition of Pitt's majorities is intelligible if, as is argued here, his ministry was not an alliance of small factions.Google Scholar

76 Cf. n. 160 below.

77 Pares, George III and the politicians, p. 78.

78 Brock, W. R., Lord Liverpool and liberal toryism 1820 to 1827 (Cambridge, 1941), pp. 78, 109.Google Scholar

79 Cf. Camden to Grafton, 29 Sept. 1784: Sir William, Anson (ed.), Autobiography and political correspondence of Augustus Henry, third duke of Grafton KG (London, 1898), p. 393.Google Scholar

80 Cf. Barnes, D. G., George III and William Pitt, 1783–1806 (Stanford, 1939), pp. 203, 267, 387–8, 469–70. At this point I must disagree with Mr Brooke's suggestion (George III, p. 256) that George III and Pitt abandoned their broad bottom ideal in 1784 in order to exclude Fox.Google Scholar

81 Fox to General Fitzpatrick, 27 Jan. 1804: Russell, Fox, iv, 15; cf. Castlereagh to Marquis Wellesley 18 May 1804: Stanhope, Pitt, iv, 182.

84 E.g. Fox to O’Brien, 7 July 1805: Russell, Fox, iv, 87; Granville Leveson Gower to Canning, 1 June 1805: Castalia Countess Granville (ed.), Lord Granville Leveson Gower {first Earl Granville) private correspondence 1781 to 1821 (London, 1917), 11, 89.

83 Portland to W. Windham, 11 Jan. 1794: earl of Rosebery, (ed.), The Windhampapers (London, 1967), 1. 199.Google Scholar

84 Quoted in O’Gorman, F., The whig party and the French revolution (London, 1967), p. 101.Google Scholar

85 E.g. Granville Leveson Gower to Lady Bessborough, [28 Sept. 1806], Granville correspondence, ii, 214.

86 In the light of recent work on Liverpool's ministry, one must reject Foord's claim (His majesty's opposition, pp. 436, 469) that Pitt's followers were transformed into a party by their opposition to the ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, so that ‘the two party system in its nineteenth century form’ began in 1806.

87 Charles, , Lord, Colchester (ed.), The diary and correspondence of Charles Abbott, Lord Colchester (London, 1861), 11, 215–16Google Scholar; Yonge, C. D., The life and administration of Robert Banks, second earl of Liverpool, K.G. (London, 1868), 1, 286–8.Google Scholar

88 Smith, E. A., Whig principles and party politics. Earl Fitzwilliam and the whig party 1748–1833 (Manchester, 1975), pp. 320–5.Google Scholar

89 Cf. F. Bamford and the duke of Wellington (eds.), The journal of Mrs Arbuthnot 1820–1832 (London, 1950), 19 Feb. 1830: ii, 337; Lord Stavordale (ed.), Further memoirs of the whig party 1807–1821 by Henry Richard Vassall third Lord Holland (London, 1905), p. 157.

90 E.g. Croker diary, 6 Jan. 1828, in Jennings, L. J. (ed.), The correspondence and diaries of the late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker (London, 1885), 1, 401.Google Scholar

91 A similar process of accretion took place in the Lords: cf. D. Large, ‘The decline of ‘the party of the Crown’ and the rise of parties in the House of Lords, 1783–1837’, E.H.R., lxxviii (1963), 678 and passim. But this was a change of degree compared with the change in kind brought about by the conflicts of the late 1820s and early 1830s: cf. ibid. pp. 679, 682, 689, 692.

92 A. Aspinall, ‘The Canningite party’, T.R.H.S., 4th ser., xvii (1934), 177. Aspinall wrongly assumed that this entailed the replacement of ‘the two party system’ by a ‘group system’ in 1801–9.

93 Cookson, J. E., Lord Liverpool's administration: The crucial years 1815–1822 (Edinburgh, 1975), p. 39.Google Scholar

94 Arbuthnot journal, 9 Feb. 1830: ii, 332.

95 Aspinall, A., ‘The coalition ministries of 1827’, E.H.R., xlii (1927), 202.Google Scholar

96 Aspinall, A., The formation of Canning's ministry, Camden 3rd ser., lix (London, 1937), p. xxx.Google Scholar

97 Aspinall, A., ‘The last of the Canningites’, E.H.R., l (1935), 639–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 With this qualification, one may accept Professor Gash's judgement: ‘The year 1832 was the point of origin for a new party system in the sense of a redefinition of party’. Gash, N., Reaction and reconstruction in English politics 1832–1852 (Oxford, 1965), p. 122Google Scholar. This view is criticized by D. E. D. Beales, ‘Parliamentary parties and the “independent” Member, 1810–1860’, in Robson, R. (ed.), Ideas and institutions of Victorian Britain (London, 1967), pp. 1–19; yet Dr Beales admits (p. 17) that ‘it would seem to be during the Reform Bill debates – at one bound rather than by a slow process – that the majority of hitherto ‘non-political’ Members, those who had been accustomed not to vote at all, became involved in politics...Political involvement a more than half-way to party affiliation’.Google Scholar

99 The ‘Derby Dilly’ in 1833–5 was an ‘attempt to form a third party, mid-way between the two main organizations and independent of both’ – but, in new circumstances, it was an attempt impossible to sustain. Cf. Johnson, D. W. J., ’Sir James Graham and the “Derby Dilly”‘, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, iv (1953), 66.Google Scholar

100 Quoted in Aspinall, Formation of Canning's Ministry, pp. xlix-i.

101 Cf. Gash, N., Politics in the age of Peel (London, 1953), pp. 393–427Google Scholar; Aspinall, A., ‘English party organisation in the early nineteenth century’, E.H.R., xli (1926), 394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

102 E.g. Newcastle to George Grenville, 7 Oct. 1761: Grenville papers, 1, 393; Temple to Wilkes, 25 Nov. 1762: ibid, 11, 5; George Grenville to Bute, 25 Mar. 1763: ibid. 11, 33.

103 Rigby to Bedford, 23 Feb. 1763: Bedford correspondence, iii, 208.

104 E.g. Pitt, reported in Grenville diary, 28 Aug. 1763: Grenville papers ii, 199.

105 Cf. my article ‘The decline of party, 1740–1760’, pp. 514–17.

106 E.g. Hume, Essays, 1, 143.

107 Cf. Christie, Ian R., Myth and reality in late eighteenth century British politics (London, 1970), pp. 196–213.Google Scholar

108 Wright, J. (ed.), The speeches of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox in the House of Commons (London, 1815), 1, 43 at 45: 26 Oct. 1775;Google Scholar 1, 421 at 429: 27 Nov. 1781; Fox to Lord Orrery, 24 June 1776: Russell, Fox, 1, 143; Fox to Mr Fitzpatrick, 3 Feb. 1778: ibid. 1, 166. Other examples will doubtless come to light, but their scarcity is remarkable. And for an example of Fox analysing parties in a different way, in Dec. 1779, cf. Speeches, 1, 213 at 219.

109 On 21 Feb. 1783: Speeches, 11, 126 at 130, 140; on 24 Mar. 1783: ibid. 11, 150 at 155; on 16 Jan. 1784: ibid, ii, 343–4.

110 E.g. Speeches, 11, 255.

111 E.g. Fox to Grafton, 19 Sept. [?1793]: Grafton, Autobiography, p. 403; cf. Fox to Lord Holland, 17 Sept. [?1793]: Russell, Fox, m, 48; Burke to Fitzwilliam, 29 Nov. 1792, quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox and the disintegration of the whig party 1782–1794 (Oxford, 1971), p. 197; Fox to T. Grenville, 6 Jan. 1794: quoted ibid. p. 229; but cf. Fox to Earl Fitzwilliam, 16 Mar. 1792, quoted in H. Butterfield, ‘Charles James Fox and the whig opposition in 1792’, Cambridge Historical Journal, ix (1949), 298.

112 Cf. Fox to Lord Holland, 18 Mar. 1794: Russell, Fox, iii, 69.

113 E.g. Wheatley, H. B. (ed.), The historical and posthumous memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall 1772–1784 (London, 1884), iii, 89: 3 June 1783.Google Scholar

114 Foord, His majesty's opposition, p. 444.

115 Aspinall, Brougham and the whig party; Roberts, M., The whig party 1807–1812 (London, 1939); Mitchell, Whigs in opposition.Google Scholar

116 Mitchell (ibid. p. 19) is obliged to describe ‘the government side’ as ‘a de facto party’.

117 Blake, Conservative party, p. 9; Mitchell, Whigs in opposition, p. 13 n. 1; Cookson, Liverpool’s administration, p. viii.

118 E.g. in May 1817. Therry, R. (ed.), The speeches of the Right Honourable George Canning (London, 1828), iii, 458 at 485; cf. Aspinall, ‘Canningite party’, p. 183.Google Scholar

119 Rolo, P. J. V., George Canning (London, 1965), p. 115.Google Scholar

120 Hansard, N. S., XVII, 432; quoted in Temperley, H., The foreign policy of Canning 1822–1827 (London, 1925), p. 438.Google Scholar

121 Carswell, J. and Dralle, L. A. (eds.), The political journal of George Bubb Dodington (Oxford, 1965), p. xxii; cf. Hill, Parliamentary parties, p. 78.Google Scholar

122 This was realized at the time. For one such theory of successive oppositions cf. Egmont to Charles Gray, [? July] 1749: A. N. Newman (ed.), ‘Leicester House politics, 1750–60, from the papers of John, second earl of Egmont’, in Camden Miscellany, xxiii, Camden 4th Ser., vol. vii (1969), p. 182.

123 Cf. E. L. Ellis, ‘William III and the politicians’, in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, pp. 127–8.

124 Jones, J. R., Country and Court. England 1658–1714 (London, 1978), p. 319.Google Scholar

125 Cf. Speck, W. A., Tory and whig: The struggle in the constituencies, 1701–1715 (London, 1970), p. 85.Google Scholar

126 George Lockhart's account in Lockhart papers, 1, 320.

127 Cruickshanks, Political untouchables, pp. 4, 6–7. Dr Cruickshanks’ is the only modern study of the early-eighteenth-century tory party to take account both of the political dimension of its conduct at home, and of the international dimension. Unhappily Dr Colley's work, cited above, seeks to explain the tories’ survival in organizational terms and does not deal with the evidence for that party's relationship, complex through it was, to Jacobitism.

128 This thesis does not depend on the assertion that many M.P.s were openly or zealously Jacobite. The question cannot in principle be decided by speculation about the sincerity of political allegiance, by distinguishing and counting Hanoverian and Jacobite tories. What a party ‘stood for’ was determined within the major national options and by the influence of its own extremists. It was obvious in c. 1710–50 that a change of dynasty was the tories’ main option and best hope of power. Political tactics continued to give expediency and principle a whole variety of relations; but the major party-political alternatives were sustained by the preponderance of France and the widely accepted claims of the Stuarts.

129 Cf. Hume, Essays 1, 143–4.

130 For early-eighteenth-century denunciations of opposition as akin to sedition, cf. Q. Skinner, “The principles and practice of opposition: the case of Bolingbroke versus Walpole’ in N. McKendrick (ed.), Historical perspectives (London, 1974), pp. 108–9.

131 Lockhart papers, 1, 442.

132 Hill, Parliamentary parties, pp. 159–60.

133 Hatton, George I, p. 127.

134 Hill, Parliamentary parties, p. 177.

135 Cf. Cruickshanks, Political untouchables, passim.

136 Pace the approach of, for example, Walcott, R. R., English politics in the early eighteenth century (Oxford, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wiggin, L. M., The faction of cousins: A political account of the Grenvilles, 1733–63 (New Haven, 1958).Google Scholar

137 Cf. Bolingbroke to Charles Wyndham, 9 May 1737: Wyndham MSS, Petworth, vol. 23, 139; Bolingbroke to Sir William Wyndham, 23 July 1739: ibid. vol. 19, m; Bolingbroke to George Lyttelton, 29 Nov. 1740: Lyttelton MSS, Birmingham Central Library, 1, 222.

138 Bolingbroke to Sir Charles Wyndham, 4 Apr. 1741: Wyndham MSS, Petworth, vol. 23, 152; cf. H. S. Conway to Horace Walpole, 16 Feb 1741: Albemarle, Rockingham, 1, 378.

139 W. Pulteney to earl of Marchmont, 15 June 1734: Marchmont papers, 11, 33.

140 Quoted by J. P. Kenyon, ‘The earl of Sunderland and the king's administration, 1693–1695’, EHR, lxxi (1956), 581.

141 O'Gorman, F., The rise of party in England. The Rockingham whigs 1760–82 (London, 1975), pp. 56, 67–8Google Scholar; Pares, George III and the politicians, p. 206; Langford, P., The first Rockingham administration 1765–1766 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 5, 12Google Scholar. Cf. Watson, D. H., ‘The rise of the opposition at Wildman's club’, B.I.H.R., xliv (1971), 55–77.Google Scholar

142 Langford, Rockingham administration, pp. 269–70.

143 O’Gorman, Rise of party, pp. 187–8, 190–1.

144 Cf. Charles Townshend to Grafton [25 Nov. 1766]: Grafton autobiography, p. 103.

145 E.g. Grenville diary, 3 Aug. 1766: Grenville papers, 11, 191.

146 Cannon, J., The Fox-North coalition (Cambridge, 1969), p. 3; cf. Foord, His majesty's opposition, p. 373.Google Scholar During Shelburne's administration the Foxites then reinterpreted the Rockingham-Shelburne ministry as a whig party one: ibid. p. 377.

147 Cannon, Fox-North coalition, pp. 83–4.

148 O’Gorman, Rise of party, p. 321.

149 Cf. especially Smith, Earl Fitzwilliam.

150 Cf. O’Gorman, F., ‘Party and Burke: the Rockingham whigs’, Government and Opposition, iii (1968), 96 and passimGoogle Scholar. Burke envisaged an opposition party entering government and there retaining its party integrity, but not, ipso facto, subsuming the ministry: Works, 1,419, 530–31. This was Grey's attitude in 1801: cf. Willis, R., ‘Fox, Grenville and the recovery of opposition, 1801–1804’, Journal of British Studies, xi (1972), 27.Google Scholar

151 North to George III, 30 Mar. [1778]: Fortescue, George III, iv, 85.

152 Cf. Fox to Rockingham, 24 Jan. 1779: Albemarle, Rockingham, ii, 371.

153 Lady Bessborough to Granville Leveson Gower, Tues. 21 [May 1805]: Granvillt correspondence, ii, 74.

154 Canning to Granville Leveson Gower, 26 Jan. 1806: ibid, ii, 169.

155 Cf. Guttridge, G. H., English whiggism and the American revolution (Berkeley, 1966), p. 137Google Scholar; Norris, J., Shelburne and reform (London, 1963), pp. 140–1, 151.Google Scholar

156 Hill, B. W., ‘Executive monarchy and the challenge of parties, 1689–1832: two concepts of government and two historiographical interpretations’, H.J., xiii (1970), 395.Google Scholar

157 Cannon, Fox-North coalition, p. 228; cf. O’Gorman, Whig party and the French revolution, p. 27. The party's organization was undoubtedly stronger in the decade 1783–93 than immediately before or after, but the significance of this was greatly exaggerated by Ginter, D. E., ‘The financing of the whig party organisation, 1783–1793’, American Historical Review, lxxi (1965–1966), 421–40, and idem, Whig organisation in the general election of ijgo (Berkeley, 1967).Google Scholar

158 P. Kelly,’British parliamentary politics, 1784–1786’, H.J., xvii (1974), 733–53; cf. Christie, End of North's ministry, pp. 116–17, 188–90.

159 Fox to Lord Holland, 6June 1803: Russell, Fox, iii, 220. The small corps of Lord Grenville separated from Pitt in 1801 over Pitt's unwillingness to oppose his successor Addington.

160 Fox to Lauderdale, 12 July 1805: ibid, iv, 97; cf. Diary and correspondence of Lord Colchester, 11, 9: 12 June 1805.

161 Willis, ‘Fox, Grenville and the recovery of opposition’.

162 Foord, His majesty's opposition, p. 422.

163 Addington became 1st Viscount Sidmouth in January 1805.

164 Cf. Harvey, A. D., ‘The Ministry of All the Talents: the whigs in office, February 1806 to March 1807’, H.J., xv (1972), 619.Google Scholar

165 M. Roberts, ‘The leadership of the whig party in the House of Commons from 1807 to 1815’, E.H.R., L (1935), 626, 638.

166 Smith, Earl Fitzwilliam, p. 318.

167 For whig aimlessness in the Commons c. 1807–30 cf. N. Gash, Reaction and reconstruction, p. 157; Foord, His majesty's opposition pp. 451–66; Mitchell, Whigs in opposition, pp. 26–37 and 81 ff.

168 Ibid. p. 22; Roberts, Whig party 1807–1812, pp. 388–9.

169 Aspinall,’ Coalition ministries of 1827’, 205. This took place despite Brougham's call, quoted ibid. p. 206, ‘to form a powerful and vigorous opposition as aparty acting together’; a call heeded by Grey but few others: ibid. pp. 213, 215.

170 Professor Mitchell's conclusion (Whigs in opposition, p. 216) was that the whig party's unity dated from 1830, though E. A. Wasson has shown (‘The coalitions of 1827 and the crisis of whig leadership’, H.J, xx (1977), 587–606) that the new alignment of 1832 was anticipated in the aims of the ‘young whigs’ in 1827. D. Close, however, argued (‘The formation of a two-party alignment ia the House of Commons between 1832 and 1841’, E.H.R., LXXXIX (1969), 257–77) that the events ef the mid 1830s, especially the king's dismissal of Grey's ministry in 1834, were more important than divisions on the Reform bill itself in sharpening party distinctions. He admitted, however, that ‘the passage of the Reform Bill resulted in a reconstruction of parties’ (p. 258). The growing conceptual clarity which Dr Close recorded in the discussion of politics in 1834–5 could not have come about had parties not realigned themselves as they did by 1832.

171 Gash, N., Mr Secretary Peel (London, 1961), p. 9. It will be clear that I take issue only with Professor Gash's use of the term ‘anomalous’.Google Scholar

172 Taylor to Grey, 14 Feb. 1832: Henry, Earl Grey (ed.), The correspondence of the late Earl Grey with his Majesty King William IV and with Sir Herbert Taylor from November 1830 to June 1832 (London, 1867), ii, 188; cf. Grey's minute of a conversation with William IV, 1 Apr. 1832: ibid, n, 299 at 305. Althorpe to Earl Spencer, 17 Aug. 182 7: Sir Denis, le Marchant, Memoir of John Charles Viscount Althorp third Earl Spencer (London, 1876), p. 223 at 224;Google Scholar cf. Althorp to Earl Spencer, 12 July 1833: ibid. p. 473 at 4.

173 Beales, D. E. D., The political parties of nineteenth century Britain (London, 1971), p. ii.Google Scholar

174 Plumb, Political stability, p. xviii.