Abstract
The Coalition Cabinet was dominated by followers of Rockingham; the Northites had a slight advantage in the other offices. The Duke of Portland, a respected young nobleman who had served as lord-lieutenant in Ireland in the Rockingham ministry, became first lord of the treasury and the nominal leader of the government.1 Charles James Fox, foreign secretary, was the heart and soul of the Coalition and leader in the House of Commons. Lord North served in a less prominent role as home secretary. Lord John Cavendish returned to the exchequer and Burke to the pay office. William Pitt set an independent course, but he was not inactive.
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Notes
David Wilkinson, The Duke of Portland: Politics and Party in the Age of George III (New York, 2003).
Dennis Large, ‘The Decline of “the Party of the Crown” and the Rise of Parties in the House of Lords, 1783–1837,’ English Historical Review (1963), 78:685, 690.
W. R. Ward, ‘Some Eighteenth-Century Civil Servants: The English Revenue Commissioners, 1754–98,’ English Historical Review (1955), 70:25–54.
Hugh Barty-King, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office: The Story of the First 200 Years, 1786–1925 (H. M. Stationery Office, 1986), 6–7.
Edward E. Curtis, The Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution (New York, 1928), 3–8, 22–4, 34–7.
Thomas W. Copeland, ‘Johnson and Burke,’ in Statesmen, Scholars, and Merchants, ed. J. S. Bromley and P. G. M. Dickson (1973), 289.
The Journal and Correspondence of William [Eden], Lord Auckland, ed. George Hogge (4 vols., 1861), 1:64.
PH 23:1152. On the effects of war and debt on the British economy, see H. V. Bowen, War and British Society, 1688–1815 (New Haven, CT, 1998), 17–80, and William J. Hausman, ‘The British Economy in Transition, 1742–1789,’ in British Politics and Society, 76–8.
Paul Kelly, ‘The Pitt-Temple Administration, 19–22 December 1783,’ Historical Journal XXVII (1974), 157–61.
The Later Correspondence of George III, ed. A. Aspinall. 5 vols. (New York, 1962–71), 1:xxxv.
C. H. Phillips, ‘The India Company “Interest” and the English Government, 1783–5,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Ser. (1970), 20:83–101.
For the role of reformers and public opinion in the election, see Paul Kelly, ‘British Politics, 1783–4: The Emergence and Triumph of the Younger Pitt’s Administration,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XXV (1972), 73–88.
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© 2007 Earl A. Reitan
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Reitan, E.A. (2007). The Coalition Ministry, 1783. In: Politics, Finance, and the People. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230211032_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230211032_8
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