Background
William Pulteney was born on 22 March 1684 in the United Kingdom.
William Pulteney was born on 22 March 1684 in the United Kingdom.
Sir William Pulteney was for many years a commanding figure in the House of Commons, but never succeeded to the great office to which he seemed destined. After his long and ultimately successful campaign to overturn Sir Robert Walpole, Pulteney was finally offered the Treasury in February 1742 and turned it down, going instead to the Lords as Earl of Bath. When he did accept the seals of office, in February 1746, he was unable to form a ministry and was never actually head of an administration.
Pulteney was originally an ally of Walpole, and went into opposition with him from 1717 to 1720, but was already sufficiently estranged from him not to be given office when Walpole returned to the ministry. He then turned down the offer of a peerage; but in 1721 he accepted the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire, in which his constituency of Hedon lay. From 1723 to 1725 he held the lucrative palace post of cofferer of the household; but he broke completely with the leading minister in April 1724, when the young Duke of Newcastle was preferred to Pulteney as secretary of state for the south. Henceforth he argued passionately in the Commons and in print that Walpole was the fount of corruption, subverting not only politicians but even the nation. With two other talented opponents—Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke; and John, Lord Carteret—Pulteney formed an opposition that in late 1726 acquired a new mouthpiece, the Craftsman newspaper. In its heyday, up to the Excise crisis of 1733 and the 1734 election, the Craftsman was the most powerful agent of opposition, not least because of the regular contributions from its eminent patrons. In 1730, at the instigation of Bolingbroke, the philosopher of opposition, Pulteney joined the Tory leader Sir William Wyndham in a combined “Patriot” opposition, taking its name from the characteristic language of the Craftsman.
When Walpole resigned in February 1742, Pulteney was widely expected to become First Lord of the Treasury, and he was indeed offered the post by George II, but he refused to accept any office. His reasoning appears to have been consistent: that he had long been tired of the ungrateful labor of leading an opposition; and that now that Walpole had fallen, there was no longer any need to oppose, and he could retire to the pleasures of private life. He took the title of Earl of Bath on 14 July 1742, and was castigated in pamphlets and the press for his part in betraying his Tory allies of the Patriot alliance, who were now excluded from a share in power, despite all the earlier rhetoric of a pure administration, formed in the national interest and regardless of party.
When Lord Wilmington died in July 1743, however, Bath applied for the Treasury and was refused in favor of Henry Pelham, brother to the Duke of Newcastle. His final opportunity came in January 1746, when the Duke of Newcastle was negotiating to bring Lord Cobham’s followers in to support the ministry, at the modest cost of appointing the most prominent of them, William Pitt, the Elder, secretary of war. When Pitt’s appointment was vetoed by George II, the minister decided on the radical step of a mass resignation. On 19 February 1746, the secretaries of state, Lords Harrington and Newcastle, resigned the seals; they were followed the next day by Pelham and by Lord Bedford, and soon after that, by a steady stream of others. Over forty leading supporters of the administration were prepared to join the leaders, leaving almost every office of state open. George turned to Bath and Carteret (now Lord Granville), who had been strengthening his resolve against Pitt; but within forty-eight hours it had become apparent that they could not find enough supporters to form a ministry. On 13 February, Newcastle and his colleagues triumphantly resumed the seals. Bath took no further active part in politics, and retired to enjoy his considerable wealth. He died on 7 July 1764, of a fever.
Among Pulteney’s less creditable political writings of this time was the pamphlet A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel (1731). The “libel” to which he was replying was a pamphlet written anonymously by Walpole’s follower William Yonge, with a dedication, also anonymous, by John, Lord Hervey. Believing that the pamphlet was authored wholly by Hervey, whose reputed bisexuality was becoming steadily more notorious at this time, Pulteney attacked the man rather than the arguments. A Proper Reply was a very improper and personal onslaught, accusing Hervey of homosexual practices, a capital crime. Hervey promptly challenged Pulteney to a duel, which was fought on 25 January 1731, resulting in only minor cuts on both sides. In the fresh exchange of pamphlets that followed this event, Pulteney once again passed the bounds of political decency in his An Answer to One Part of an Infamous Libel(1731). He went so far as to repeat words that Walpole had allegedly said about the king, which angered George II so much that he struck Pulteney’s name from the list of privy councillors.
Having repeatedly failed to undermine Walpole’s power, even in the face of the almost nationwide furor over the Excise, Pulteney became disheartened. In a typical letter of 1735, he lamented: “It is in vain to struggle against universal Corruption and I am quite weary of the Opposition.” In 1738, however, a popular outcry over the seizures of British ships in the Caribbean by the Spanish authorities gave Pulteney new heart and a chance to exercise his undoubted oratorical skills in Parliament. As Chesterfield, in his Characters (1777), described Pulteney at this time, “He was the most complete orator and debater in the House of Commons, eloquent, entertaining, persuasive, strong, and patriotic as occasion required, for he had arguments, wit, and tears, at his command.”
Nonetheless, Pulteney again faltered in his attacks in the last year of the Walpole ministry. In June 1741, at a crucial point when the opposition coalition was counting its forces after the general election and settling strategy for the defeat of the administration, Pulteney had lost his appetite for leadership. George Bubb Doding- ton found him listless and inactive: “He saw no use of a meeting, or concert; would by no means undertake to write to or summon gentlemen ... he was weary of being at the head of a party, he would rather row in the galleys, and was absolutely resolved not to charge himself with taking the lead.”