Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of genealogical tables
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction. Hanover: the missing dimension
- 2 Hanoverian nexus: Walpole and the Electorate
- 3 Pitt and Hanover
- 4 George III and Hanover
- 5 The Hanoverian dimension in early nineteenth-century British politics
- 6 The end of the dynastic union, 1815–1837
- 7 The university of Göttingen and the Personal Union, 1737–1837
- 8 The confessional dimension
- 9 Hanover and the public sphere
- 10 Dynastic perspectives
- 11 British maritime strategy and Hanover 1714–1763
- 12 Hanover in mid-eighteenth-century Franco-British geopolitics
- 13 Hanover and British republicanism
- Index
3 - Pitt and Hanover
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of genealogical tables
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction. Hanover: the missing dimension
- 2 Hanoverian nexus: Walpole and the Electorate
- 3 Pitt and Hanover
- 4 George III and Hanover
- 5 The Hanoverian dimension in early nineteenth-century British politics
- 6 The end of the dynastic union, 1815–1837
- 7 The university of Göttingen and the Personal Union, 1737–1837
- 8 The confessional dimension
- 9 Hanover and the public sphere
- 10 Dynastic perspectives
- 11 British maritime strategy and Hanover 1714–1763
- 12 Hanover in mid-eighteenth-century Franco-British geopolitics
- 13 Hanover and British republicanism
- Index
Summary
The weight of his popularity, and his universally acknowledged abilitys, obtruded him upon King George the Second, to whom he was personally obnoxious. He was made Secretary of State. In this difficult and delicate situation, which one would have thought must have reduced either the patriot, or the minister to a decisive option, he managed with such ability, that while he served the King more effectually in his most unwarrantable Electoral views, than any former Minister however willing, had dared to do, He still preserved all his credit, and popularity with the Publick, whom he assured and convinced that the protection and defence of Hannover with an army of 75 000 men in British pay, was the only possible means of securing our possessions or acquisitions in North America. So much easier it is to deceive than to undeceive Mankind.
Lord Chesterfield on William Pitt, 1762.Consistency and inconsistency are familiar themes in the political history of eighteenth-century Britain. No one has been more investigated in this regard than William Pitt the Elder, earl of Chatham, and in no respect more so than in his relationship to the Electorate of Hanover. Uriel Dann speaks of his ‘apparent inconsistency’, Adolphus William Ward of ‘something of inconsistency’, and O. A. Sherrard of ‘seeming inconsistencies’ in his Hanoverian policy. Pitt's policy towards Hanover also features prominently in the two recent scholarly biographies by Marie Peters and Jeremy Black. This chapter takes a fresh look at this well-studied subject.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837 , pp. 28 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007