Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- For my parents and Toby
- Preface
- Part I The Problem of Tory Survival
- Part II The Ingredients of Tory Survival
- Part III Single-Party Government Assailed
- 7 A Dark Hole with Blind Guides: 1714–24
- 8 The Twisted Threads of Party: 1725–41
- 9 Broad-Bottom Schemes and Princely Alliances: 1742–53
- 10 Acceptance and Dispersal? 1754 and Onwards
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Manuscript Sources
- Notes
- Index
9 - Broad-Bottom Schemes and Princely Alliances: 1742–53
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- For my parents and Toby
- Preface
- Part I The Problem of Tory Survival
- Part II The Ingredients of Tory Survival
- Part III Single-Party Government Assailed
- 7 A Dark Hole with Blind Guides: 1714–24
- 8 The Twisted Threads of Party: 1725–41
- 9 Broad-Bottom Schemes and Princely Alliances: 1742–53
- 10 Acceptance and Dispersal? 1754 and Onwards
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Manuscript Sources
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Because the ministerial reconstruction of 1742 in the end resulted in the primacy of Walpole's chosen successor, Henry Pelham, the political leeway made available by the Minister's fall and its popular impact have often been understated. The dismissive verdicts of bitter contemporaries (‘Besides getting rid of this pacifick Whig Ministry’, James Oglethorpe recalled in 1755, ‘England got a number of Patriot Orators, and they got places’) seem only to be confirmed by the meticulous accounts of modern scholars intent on explaining the Old Corps' longevity. The duke of Argyll, John Owen asserts, was the only major opposition whig to canvass tory promotions in 1742. The King himself remained steadfastly opposed to this concession - which was really just as well, since the tory parliamentary party found the prospect of office ‘uncongenial’. As the opposition had always been in general policy agreement with Walpole, royal intransigence, tory diffidence, and Patriot ambition combined to ensure that the only thing required to re-establish whig governmental supremacy in 1742 was a judicious reallocation of employments. When Lord Carteret was tactless enough to compromise this settlement by an over-enthusiastic pursuit of Hanoverian interests and monarchical favour, he too could be overborne in 1744 and, more successfully, in 1746, by yet more permutations in employments and a great deal of backstairs intrigue. ‘Consequently’, wrote Archibald Foord, when he surveyed these high-political games of snakes and ladders and their reptilian and aspiring participants, the post-Walpolian malcontents ‘made no contribution to the institutional development of parliamentary Opposition’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- In Defiance of OligarchyThe Tory Party 1714-60, pp. 236 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982