The Duke of Newcastle and the Imperial Election Plan, 1749-1754

To many of his contemporaries and to most of the historians who have subsequently dealt with him, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768), represents unredeemed mediocrity, or even the buffoon, in power. Lord Hervey ridiculed his “egregious folly and formal absurdity”; Horace Walpole described him as “a Secretary of State without intelligence, a duke without money, a man of infinite intrigue, without secrecy or policy, and a Minister despised and hated by his master, by all parties and Ministers”; Lord Waldegrave concluded that he “wants both spirit and capacity to be first in command: neither has he the smallest particle of that elevation of mind, or of that dignity of behaviour, which command respect and characterise the great statesman.”More recent commentators, while often readier to look for redeeming characteristics in the Duke, have likewise tended to come to negative assessments. Basil Williams dismissed Newcastle as “woolly-minded and touchy … an essentially weak man without clear conceptions of his own”; Sir Lewis Namier wrote that “his nature and mind were warped, twisted, and stunted” and that “there was unconscious self-mortification in Newcastle's tenure of office”; J. H. Plumb portrayed a “dithering and twittering” Newcastle, a minister of unprepossessing intellectual gifts and given to excessive complaining and anxiety.All these criticisms must face, however, one serious and recurring counterargument. Newcastle held major office for almost forty years – as Secretary of State (1724-54), as First Lord of the Treasury (1754-56, 1757-62), and as Lord Privy Seal (1765-66). Moreover, as early as 1717 he had been appointed to the Privy Council and been made Lord Chamberlain.