William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

His mother helped him financially whenever she could, but since the annuity settled upon Chatham by the King in 1761 and now due to her was frequently in arrears she was not always able to do so. Soon Pitt had borrowed £1,000 at 5 per cent from the friendly banker Mr Thomas Coutts, in return for his signing over the paternal legacy which would never be paid. In order to pursue a career at the Bar, however, he needed a residence at Lincoln’s Inn, which required still more substantial resources. He wrote hopefully to his mother:

It will very soon be necessary for me to have rooms at Lincoln’s Inn … The whole expense of these will be Eleven Hundred Pounds, which sounds to me a frightful sum … The rooms are in an exceeding good situation in the new Buildings, and will be perfectly fit for Habitation in about two months. Soon after that time it will be right for me to begin attending Westminster Hall during the term, and then chambers will be more convenient than any other residence … I have done no more than to secure that they may not be engaged to any other person till I have returned an Answer, and I shall be glad to know your opinion as soon as possible. You will be so good as to consider how far you approve of the idea, if it be practicable, and whether there are any means of advancing the money out of my fortune before I am of Age.5

Desperate to help him, his mother was no doubt behind the surprise suggestion by his uncle Earl Temple that he would advance Pitt the necessary sum. Having paid the first instalment, Earl Temple disobligingly died, and Pitt secured the chambers on the promise of his late uncle’s obligation, while mortgaging them the following year to obtain more cash. Already, at the age of twenty-one, he had dipped a toe into the vicious whirlpool that his personal finances would become.

From his late teens Pitt enjoyed the busy life of a young man who could move about freely, flitting between the family homes, attendance at Lincoln’s Inn and the Galleries of the Lords and Commons in London, and the reassuring intellectual security of Pembroke College. He was often in London with his brothers and sisters, frequently staying in Harley Street at the house of his older sister Hester, who in 1775 had married Lord Mahon, son of Earl Stanhope, and by early 1780 had three children. Pitt seems to have attended the opera occasionally, having developed a taste for music at Cambridge even though Pretyman subsequently insisted that he had ‘no ear’,6 and reported attending masquerades and evenings at the Pantheon,* but he was not keen on the wilder social events:

Nerot’s Hotel, Wednesday Night [1779]

James is gone with my sisters to the ball as a professed dancer, which stands in the place of an invitation; a character which I do not assume, and have therefore stayed away.

He continued to prefer more intellectual evenings. It was at a dinner in Lincoln’s Inn during the Gordon Riots that the celebrated encounter took place between the twenty-one-year-old Pitt and the already famous historian Edward Gibbon, who was publishing the second and third volumes of his momentous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Another young lawyer, James Bland Burges, described how Gibbon had just concluded a series of ‘brilliant and pleasant’ anecdotes ‘with his customary tap on the lid of his snuff box’, when ‘a deep toned but clear voice was heard from the bottom of the table, very calmly and firmly impugning the correctness of the narrative, and the propriety of the doctrine of which it had been made the vehicle’. Gibbon saw

a tall, thin, and rather ungainly looking young man, who now sat quietly and silently eating some fruit. There was nothing very prepossessing or very formidable in his exterior, but, as the few words he had uttered appeared to have made a considerable impression on the company, Mr. Gibbon, I suppose, thought himself bound to maintain his honour by suppressing such an attempt to dispute his supremacy. He accordingly undertook the defence of the propositions in question, and a very animated debate took place between him and his youthful antagonist, Mr. Pitt, and for some time was conducted with great talent and brilliancy on both sides. At length the genius of the young man prevailed over that of his senior, who, finding himself driven into a corner from which there was no escape, made some excuse arising from the table and walked out of the room.

Gibbon stalked out ‘in high dudgeon’, and ‘when we returned into the dining-room we found Mr. Pitt proceeding very tranquilly with the illustration of the subject from which his opponent had fled, and which he discussed with such ability, strength of argument, and eloquence, that his hearers were filled with profound admiration’.7

It had been clear for some years that a career as a lawyer would be a fallback for Pitt, and the proximity to the House of Commons of the law courts, literally yards away in and around Westminster Hall, provided an additional incentive for him. As it turned out, his legal career was not long, but during it he again showed his usual mixture of easy ability and high popularity in private company. Another lawyer of the time recalled: ‘Among lively men of his own time of life, Mr. Pitt was always the most lively and convivial in the many hours of leisure which occur to young unoccupied men on a Circuit, and joined all the little excursions to Southampton, Weymouth, and such parties of amusement as were habitually formed. He was extremely popular. His name and reputation of high acquirements at the university commanded the attention of his seniors. His wit, his good humour, and joyous manners endeared him to the younger part of the Bar.’8

He was called to the Bar in the summer of 1780, but it is clear throughout all his correspondence that his overriding fascination remained with politics. In the summer of 1779 it was thought by some that Parliament might be dissolved two years ahead of its maximum seven-year term. The war was going badly, Lord North and his colleagues appeared dejected and the King was even forced to preside at a Cabinet meeting to try to deter North’s enemies from attacking his First Minister. Pitt turned his thoughts to how and where he could enter Parliament.

Pitt wanted to be in Parliament from the earliest possible date, but it did not accord with his concept of himself simply to represent any constituency which was available. He had a very clear idea of where he wished to represent, and from the summer of 1779 expressed an explicit interest in being one of the two Members for Cambridge University.* This was not simply because he spent a good deal of time there and was familiar with the place, since there was little need in this period for most Members of Parliament to know or to spend time in their constituencies. Rather it was because from the outset he wanted to be a particular type of politician, and that would require a particular type of constituency.

From the perspective of the twenty-first century, accustomed as we are to universal suffrage and the periodic redrawing of constituency boundaries to keep up with the changing distribution of population, the electoral basis of the House of Commons in the eighteenth century seems extraordinary and chaotic. It was not democratic in any modern sense of the term, and was not intended to be; but it was intended to ensure that the interests of every part of the country were represented, and that an element of competition took place among the aristocracy and country gentry as to who would have access to power and the spoils of office.

The House of Commons in 1780 had 558 Members, around a hundred fewer than today, with 489 from England, forty-five from Scotland and twenty-four from Wales. Ireland had a separate Parliament which was to be given increased powers in 1782, so there were no Irish seats in the House of Commons at this stage. Only the English constituencies were of interest to Pitt as he sought his first election to Parliament. Of these the generally most prestigious were the forty counties, each of which elected two Members. For two reasons, however, these were of little appeal to a politician who aspired to high office. First, they had a relatively wide franchise, embracing all males who owned the freehold of land with a rental value of more than forty shillings a year, and could have electorates running into many thousands. A contested election in Yorkshire, for instance, could easily produce 20,000 voters at the poll. As a result they were extremely expensive to contest (William Wilberforce’s two opponents in Yorkshire in 1807 reportedly spent over £100,000 each – the equivalent of more than £5 million), and the funds had to be found by the candidate, or a rich patron, or his supporters. Often huge sums were spent on a ‘canvass’ of county seats to see whether it was worth putting a particular candidate forward before embarking on the immense expense and trouble of actually contesting the election. In the 1780 election, only two counties would actually go to the lengths of having a contest.

As an additional obstacle it had been agreed in 1707, as part of an earlier attempt to rein in the patronage of the Crown, that an MP accepting an office of profit from the Crown such as a ministerial position would resign his seat and fight a by-election. This practice continued into the early twentieth century, sometimes leading to the defeat of freshly appointed Ministers such as Winston Churchill in 1908. In the eighteenth century the expense of fighting a county seat over and over again would have prohibited a ministerial career. On the whole, the counties were represented by ‘independent country gentlemen’ from long-established local families, but occasionally a contested county could give great authority to a popular campaign, such as the repeated re-election of John Wilkes for Middlesex in the 1760s.

By far the most numerous constituencies were the 203 cities and boroughs which elected 405 Members between them. These were heavily weighted to the south-west of the country and to seaports, and were still based on the wealth and prominence of towns in mediaeval times. The entitlement to vote in these constituencies varied hugely, sometimes being relatively wide as in the counties (the City of Westminster itself being an example), sometimes limited to the few dozen members of the corporation of the town, and sometimes limited to the owners of certain properties or ‘burgages’. It was thus variously possible to control a borough by instructing the voters, by bribing the corporation, or simply by owning sufficient burgages. Landowners would commonly instruct their tenants how to vote, and since the voting itself was openly recorded this rarely left the voters with much of a choice. In other circumstances voters could sell themselves to the highest bidder. As Thomas Pitt wrote in 1740: ‘There are few [Cornish] boroughs where the common sort of people do not think they have as much right to sell themselves and their votes, as they have to sell their corn and their cattle.’9 The provision of meals and alcohol was a standard part of such bribery; alcohol could be useful in other ways too, as George Selwyn, MP for Gloucester, complained in 1761. ‘Two of my voters were murdered yesterday by an experiment which we call shopping, that is, locking them up and keeping them dead drunk to the day of election. Mr. Snell’s agents forced two single Selwyns into a post chaise, where, being suffocated with the brandy that was given them and a very fat man that had the custody of them, they were taken out stone dead.’10

Over half of the boroughs could be purchased in one way or another, an average price in the late eighteenth century being around £3,000 to £4,000. They would be bought by the major political families, who might control half a dozen such seats; or by ‘Nabobs’ returning with money from India and seeking to use their wealth to purchase influence; or, amazingly by the standards of later centuries, by the Treasury itself, which would often use several tens of thousands of pounds of the King’s money, and some of the taxpayer’s, to procure the election of government candidates in a general election.

Pitt set his face against contesting most of these constituencies. He could not afford the expense of fighting one of the truly open boroughs, nor was he well enough known in any of them to have a chance of success. He did not want to be instructed how to vote in Parliament by a patron who had purchased his election, and he was not a supporter of the government. He received tentative offers from his cousins of the old family borough of Old Sarum, which Thomas Pitt had pawned to the Treasury in 1761 as he fled bankruptcy, and of Buckingham, which was in the pocket of Earl Temple. Not only were these offers vague, but he told his mother he was worried that taking them up could not ‘be done on a liberal, Independent Footing’.11 For Pitt was even now pursuing the ideal of being different from other politicians. He already combined a radiant intellectual self-confidence with his deep sense of being Chatham’s son, and Chatham had cultivated at the high points of his career the notion of detachment and independence from party and patronage (although he had been happy to represent the pocket boroughs of the Duke of Newcastle for many years). Pitt, who was carried along by the demands for economical and parliamentary reform as the answer to the corruption and waste so evident under Lord North, aspired to succeed in politics through ‘character’ rather than through ‘influence’. Steeped in the classical texts which praised the ‘virtue’ of outstanding figures, he could be forgiven for envisaging his own heroic role as an answer to the corruption of the times and a reinforcement of the traditions of his father. He already knew enough not to be naïve about political methods, and would be happy to let ‘influence’ be used on his behalf, but throughout his entire career he would seek to maintain the independence and incorruptibility of his own character, and at all costs the appearance of it.

Thus it was idealism as well as familiarity which led him to seek election for Cambridge University. ‘It is a seat of all others’, he wrote to his mother in July 1779, ‘the most desirable, as being free from expense, perfectly independent, and I think in every respect extremely honourable … You will perhaps think the idea hastily taken up, when I tell you that six Candidates have declared already; but I assure you that I shall not flatter myself with any vain hopes.’12

It is not clear who had encouraged Pitt to have such hopes, for vain they appeared to be for a twenty-year-old up against the long-established candidates of the main political groupings. Writing for support to opposition figures, he received a rather dusty reply from the Marquis of Rockingham: ‘I am so circumstanced from the knowledge I have of several persons who may be candidates, and who indeed are expected to be so, that it makes it impossible for me in this instance to show the attention to your wishes which your own as well as the great merits of your family entitle you to.’13 He also received a rather patronising putdown from the normally helpful Earl Temple: ‘As to your prospect of success, I cannot form any opinion … How far it may be advisable for you before you have more ripened in your profession to launch out into the great ocean of politicks … is a matter of great doubt … The memory of your father & the great character you have attained speak forcibly in your favour; but a dead minister, the most respectable that ever existed, weighs very light in the scale against any living one.’14

Pitt the young idealist was not put off by this lofty discouragement, and commenced his canvassing.* He busied himself writing to acquaintances around the university, ‘I rely on the support of my own College and my musical friends, both which characters, I hope prejudice you in my favour.’15 But in the event there was to be no election in 1779. In early 1780 Pitt was still sitting in the Gallery of the Commons watching the debates of the same Parliament, the North administration still battling on. His letters exulted in seeing the government defeated several times: ‘What the consequence will be, cannot be guessed, but I have no ideas of Ministry being able to stand.’16 He watched excitedly as Edmund Burke – ‘I had no Idea till now of his Excellence’17 – brought in his sweeping proposals for economical reform, seeking to abolish the special royal jurisdictions in Wales, Cheshire, Lancaster and Cornwall, to reduce the Civil List through which money was provided to the King, and to abolish the offices of Master of the Household, Treasurer, Comptroller, Cofferer, the Board of the Green-Cloth, the Wardrobe Office, the Jewel Office, the Keepers of Stag Hounds, Buck Hounds, Fox Hounds, and many other Crown offices. A Bill was introduced to exclude government contractors from being Members of Parliament, along with the presentation of damning evidence of their greed and inefficiency. At last major reform seemed in the offing.

Yet Pitt also watched as one by one Burke’s proposals were watered down and then abandoned, and as the much-vaunted Contractors Bill was crushed in the House of Lords. He watched Lord North take on the chin the famous motion condemning the influence of the Crown, and then render it meaningless by defeating a motion asking the King not to dissolve Parliament until the influence of the Crown at elections had been diminished. Pitt learnt the lesson, one he would not forget as he led a government facing a hostile House of Commons only four years later, that even a government assailed on all sides can tough it out for a time if it sticks together and has the solid support of the King. And he soon learnt a second lesson: a government working with the King could spring a nasty surprise.

Parliament rose in mid-August after a long and exhausting session. No sooner had opposition politicians relaxed into their summer watering holes than, on 1 September, George III agreed to North’s request that Parliament be dissolved and an immediate general election announced. With the opposition surprised and disorganised, opinion backing the government against the recent Gordon Riots, and the Treasury’s money doing its work in marginal cases, the North administration was confident of broadly maintaining its majority. By now Pitt had secured the support of the Earl of Shelburne, who led a small band of parliamentarians still loyal to the memory of Chatham. He wrote an effusive letter of thanks, saying he was ‘truly sensible of this fresh instance of that friendly assistance which our family has eminently experienced from your Lordship’.18 When the election was called, Pitt rushed to Cambridge, but his contest was hopeless. On 16 September it was announced that he had come bottom of the poll of five candidates, the two seats for Cambridge University being won by a sitting Member who supported the government and a previous runner-up who was a strong follower of Rockingham. Pitt had been squeezed out. He wrote philosophically to his mother:

Pemb. Hall, Sept. 16 [1780),

My dear Mother,

Mansfield and Townshend have run away with the Prize, but my struggle has not been dishonourable.

I am just going to Cheveley [the seat of the Duke of Rutland] for a day or two, and shall soon return to you for as long as the law will permit, which will now be probably the sole object with me. I hope you are all well.

Your ever dutiful and affectionate

W. Pitt19

It was not an easy autumn for the family. Pitt’s sister Hester had never fully recovered from the birth of her third child in February. She died in July. Over the next few years Pitt and his bereaved brother-in-law Lord Mahon would become close friends, but this was a sad time made even worse by the news the following year that the youngest brother, James, had died on naval service in the West Indies at the end of 1780. Pitt wrote to Pretyman: ‘I have to regret the loss of a brother who had every thing that was most amiable and promising, every thing that I could love and admire; and I feel the favourite hope of my mind extinguished by this untimely blow. Let me however, assure you, that I am too much tried in affliction not to be able to support myself under it; and that my poor mother and sister, to whom I brought the sad account yesterday, have not suffered in their health, from so severe a shock.’20

With the death of Earl Temple the previous year, Pitt’s mother had now lost in rapid succession her husband, elder brother, eldest daughter and youngest son. After Hester’s death William spent time at Hayes or Burton Pynsent with his mother, and at other times kept up his flow of excited and informative letters. By November 1780 he could report at last that he would be a Member of Parliament. His Cambridge friend Lord Granby had now succeeded his grandfather as Duke of Rutland. Wanting to see Pitt in Parliament as soon as possible, he approached his friend Sir James Lowther, who controlled a number of boroughs in the north of England. As Lowther’s cousin William had been returned in the election for both Appleby and Carlisle and chose to sit for the latter, Lowther needed a new Member for Appleby. Such rearrangements in the few months after a general election were entirely customary in the eighteenth century. Lowther had a reputation as a rather dominating patron, but he was prepared to lift any normal conditions for the son of Chatham. Pitt wrote to his mother:

Lincoln’s Inn, Thursday night [November 1780]

My dear Mother,

I can now inform you that I have seen Sir J. Lowther, who has repeated to me the offer He had before made, and in the handsomest manner. Judging from my Father’s Principles, He concludes that mine would be agreeable to his own, and on that Ground, to me of all others the most agreeable desires to bring me in. No Kind of Condition was mentioned, but that if ever our Lines of Conduct should become opposite, I should give Him an opportunity of choosing another Person. On such Liberal Terms I could certainly not hesitate to accept the proposal, than which Nothing could be in any respect more agreeable. Appleby is the Place I am to represent, and the Election will be made (probably in a week or Ten days) without my having any trouble, or even visiting my constituents.21

The offer from Lowther was liberal enough to provide Pitt with freedom of action unless he completely reversed his political stance. William Pitt, aged twenty-one, was now a Member of Parliament.

*Assessments of inflation over such long periods are at best approximate. In this book any illustrations of the present-day value of money in Pitt’s time are based on the index agreed in 2003 by the House of Commons Library, the Bank of England and the Office of National Statistics.

*The Pantheon, on Oxford Street to the east of Oxford Circus, was a prominent venue for concerts and dances and was described by Horace Walpole as ‘the most beautiful edifice in England’. Today the site is occupied by a store of Marks & Spencer.

*Cambridge and Oxford Universities had two Members each. The University Members were finally abolished in 1948.

*The franchise in the universities was based on membership of the University Senate, and was thus possessed only by academics. These constituencies were also unusual in having a secret ballot. The electorate of Cambridge University was a little over seven hundred strong in the early 1780s.

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