King George and Pitt the Younger

Abstract The pivotal position in the ministerial crisis of autumn 1783 was that of young William Pitt, who had been sounded out in the spring, but had declined to form a ministry. Ironically, this meant that the king’s hopes of rescue depended upon the Grenvilles—since Temple was Pitt’s first cousin and the son of George Grenville—the very people he had detested in the 1760s. But one difficulty was that the king was uncertain to what extent Pitt felt himself pledged to further measures of economical reform and to parliamentary reform—his maiden speech in 1781 had, after all, been made on the need to reduce the influence of the crown. The opportunity for which the king had waited came with the decision of ministers to bring forward an India Bill, yet another attempt