Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle

In most histories of Great Britain in the eighteenth century the ministry of Henry Pelham, 1743 to 1754, is accorded small space. For example, Basil Williams' The Whig Supremacy, in the Oxford History of England, devotes only slightly more than thirty pages to these eleven years. No full-scale biography of Pelham has appeared since Archdeacon Coxe's enormous two-volume work in 1829, and this, as Macaulay wrote of a similar work, was the product of the author's scissors and paste pot rather than of his pen. Much has been done on phases of the career of Newcastle, but no complete biography has been attempted. It has been suggested that the enormous mass of material in the Newcastle and Hardwicke papers available in the Manuscript Room of the British Museum has scared off possible biographers. This, however, is not the only explanation. At one time I gave serious consideration to devoting several years to a full biography of the Duke; but in the end it was the quality of Newcastle and not the quantity of the material which deterred me.The neglect of Pelham, however, is more puzzling; and appears to be a case of unsalutary neglect. Possibly the best explanation lies in the Pittolatry (if the term is allowable) of the great majority of both English and American historians writing on this period. Usually Pelham is not even ranked as a John the Baptist to William Pitt, but rather is treated in the same relationship to him as the older interpretation of the Old Regime in France is to the French Revolution and the Unreformed House of Commons to the Reform Bill of 1832.