Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle, in full Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, marquess of Clare, earl of Clare, Viscount Haughton, Baron Pelham of Laughton, Baron Pelham of Stanmer, original name Thomas Pelham (born July 21, 1693—died November 17, 1768, London, England), prime minister of Great Britain from 1754 to 1756 and from 1757 to 1762.
Background
Thomas Pelham-Holles was born (21 July 1693) the son of Thomas, Baron Pelham of Laughton, and added the name Holies to his own in 1711 when he inherited the estates of his maternal uncle John Holies. In 1713, while still a minor, he inherited the title and estates of his father. Just as Newcastle reached the age of 21, in 1714, George I came to the throne. The king soon showed his appreciation of the loyal activity of this young, wealthy, and devoted Whig. In October 1714 Pelham was created Earl of Clare, a tide that gave the name to his estate, Claremont in Surrey, which to the end of his life was his favorite residence. There he kept his celebrated French chef and lavished huge sums on landscaping, emploing first Charles Bridgeman and later William Kent.
Education
He was educated at Westminster and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and upon the death of his uncle, John Holles, in 1711, Pelham succeeded to his great estates and adopted the name of Holles; in 1712 he succeeded his father, Lord Pelham, in his lands and title.
Career
In April 1717 the young duke took up an important court post as lord chamberlain. In April 1724 Newcastle embarked on the first of his great state employments, as secretary of state for the Southern Department, with responsibilities not only for southern Europe but also for overseas colonies, most importantly those in North America. Occasionally, Newcastle’s use of patronage while in this office contributed to effective government, as it did in his sponsorship of William Shirley, a Sussex man and Pelham supporter, as candidate for governor of Massachusetts. Generally, however, the duke practiced what has been called “salutary neglect,” leaving the colonists to their own decision-making processes.
By the late 1730s, Newcastle was developing his independence from Walpole. He headed a parliamentary group that, against the prime minister’s wishes, favored war with Spain (which began in October 1739). After Walpole’s fall in 1742, the duke and his brother, Henry Pelham, became the leaders, along with Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, of the “old corps” of Whigs who had long controlled the government. In February 1748, at the close of the War of Austrian Succession, Newcastle was transferred to the post of secretary of state for the north, and at the same time took over as leader of the House of Lords, a role for which he was not well suited, as he rarely spoke well enough to lead debates on behalf of the ministry.
In March 1754, when his brother died, Newcastle became First Lord of the Treasury. Unable to persuade William Pitt, the Elder, to join him in government, Newcastle resigned in November 1756. At what could have been the end of his career of almost forty years in government, his services were recognized in the granting him of the additional title of Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme—so devised as to pass the Newcastle name on to his favorite nephew, “Linky,” the Earl of Lincoln, when the duke died without issue. At the end of June 1757, Newcastle resumed office as prime minister, bringing Pitt with him as secretary of state for the south. The war effort was newly galvanized by a combination of Newcastle’s administrative energy and thoroughness with Pitt’s strategic sense and oratory.
With the accession of George III in October 1760, however, Newcastle’s days of favor were over. He was required by the new king to manage the general election of January 1761 without any help from the secret service funds. Using his own money and all the influence that remained to a politician who was in his late sixties and obviously soon to be discarded in favor of Lord Bute, Newcastle secured a creditable majority but was increasingly bypassed in decision making as the war was brought to a speedy and by no means favorable end. At the end of May 1762 the duke resigned, loftily refusing a pension despite his enormous debts. His only subsequent role in high politics was as Lord Privy Seal in Lord Rockingham’s ministry, from July 1765 to July 1766. He was delighted to be back at the center of affairs and again in control of ecclesiastical patronage. In March 1766 he gave a notably successful speech in the Lords on the repeal of the Stamp Act and the need for change in Parliament’s relations with the American colonies. Newcasde finally retired to private life when Rockingham was dismissed from office, and once more he refused an offered pension of £4,000. He suffered a stroke the following year, and died in November 1768, having provided in his will that all his debts must be paid before any legacies could take effect.
Achievements
Through his control of government patronage, he wielded enormous political influence during the reigns of Kings George I and George II. Newcastle was widely caricatured, often being portrayed as a muddle-headed buffoon who struggled to understand the business of government. He was one of the most ridiculed politicians of the 18th century.
Politics
Together Newcastle and Walpole managed to drive a wedge between Spain and Austria, making an ally of the latter, and directing their future efforts against Spain. Subsequently, however, it turned out that Britain's long-term major rival was neither of the two but France, which had been considered a close ally up to that point. The increasingly confrontational actions of the French Prime Minister Cardinal Fleury soon convinced them that they had been wrong. This misjudgment was later used by the Patriot Whigs to castigate the Ministry for their lack of preparation against the French threat.
Views
Newcasde’s main preoccupations were the church and legal administration at home, and the balance of European power abroad. He clung to what has been called the “old system” in diplomacy, in which the maritime and Protestant identities of Britain and the United Provinces made them natural partners, along with some small German states and the Habsburg Empire, which although Catholic, were dynastically opposed to the two other major Catholic powers, France and Spain, both under Bourbon rule. This broad alignment served British interests well for a long time, though Newcastle’s failure to see that circumstances had changed in the 1750s was one cause of the country’s entry into the Seven Years’ War in 1756.
Personality
A wealthy aristocrat, Newcastle was the first British prime minister who had not sat in the House of Commons prior to attaining the top government office. He was also a long-serving and dedicated career politician who loved office and who was much poorer when he left it than he had been when he entered it. His ducal income of around £25,000 a year, arising from his extensive property in 11 English counties, was never enough to support his lavish spending, much of which was aimed at extending his influence and securing him support in elections. He was never free of debt, which haunted him throughout his life. By age 30 he had borrowed at least £100,000, and fifteen years later he had debts of nearly twice that sum.
Newcastle’s finances were put into the hands of trustees in 1724, a new and more stringent trust was formed in 1738, and with the aid of his brother Henry Pelham a final Pelham family settlement was agreed in November 1741. However, the discussions between Newcastle and his various estate stewards seem more frequently to have revolved around politics and electioneering than around money. He involved himself energetically and in minute detail in the business of winning electoral support, knowing individually hundreds of voters and people of influence in the constituencies that he direcdy controlled, and using all of the government resources at his disposal to strengthen his base of support. As secretary of state he was a fount of patronage, granting pardons for convicted criminals at the request of local gentlemen (a frequent demand) and controlling appointments to many minor places. In addition, after he became the governments ecclesiastical minister in 1736, he reveled in the extensive possibilities for patronage within the Anglican church, vetting candidates with an eye both to good churchmanship and solid Whig beliefs. By the time he was 50, Newcastle was the most formidable election manager alive, if only by dint of long and assiduous practice rather than a genius for innovative thinking.
Newcastle was an indefatigably industrious secretary of state, working a full week in his London office, despite his love of Claremont and of food and wines. Paperwork was his obsession, and he preserved even minute scraps of official correspondence and memoranda. At cabinet meetings he reserved one end of the cabinet table for himself, so as to spread out all his papers and to keep a full record of what passed. His passion for documentation, and his need for constant advice and reassurance in letters from his closest colleagues, gave rise to the most extensive and complete record of activity of any British statesman. His surviving papers fill more than 425 volumes in the British Library alone. Historians who have used those papers in detailed studies of diplomacy and political conflict have judged Newcastle more positively than have those who relied more heavily on contemporary descriptions of the duke’s fussy and undistinguished manner and his undoubted absurdities.
Anecdote can, however, enrich our understanding of Newcastle’s personality. The royal family is said to have nicknamed him Permis because of his excessively deferential way of asking in French, each time he spoke, whether it was permitted to make an observation (“Est il permis?”). Newcasde also reportedly was so afraid of sleeping in unaired sheets that when visiting strange houses he sent servants to lie in his bed before he would occupy it himself. At the funeral of George II, if Horace Walpole is to be believed, the king’s son, “the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round, found it was the Duke of Newcasde standing upon his train, to avoid the chill of the marble.” With all his oddities, and despite his good-natured inability to say no to requests (which often led him to make promises and then disappoint petitioners when he could not keep them), the duke was not lacking in shrewdness and political talent. He was certainly hungry for office even in old age, not least because his finances absolutely required that he maintain lucrative employment.
Connections
In April 1717 married Lady Henrietta Godolphin, the 16-year-old granddaughter of the Duke of Marlborough. It was a singularly devoted, though childless union: Henrietta like himself was a hypochondriac, and the smallest of her imaginary indispositions was enough, even after forty years of marriage, to justify Newcastle’s neglect of official business until she recovered.
