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Fox, Grenville, and the Recovery of Opposition, 1801-1804

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Richard E. Willis
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Extract

The revival of the Foxite opposition from the demoralizing effects of its rupture of 1792-1794 and the subsequent secession of 1797 is an important and not fully understood episode in Great Britain's political history. The central feature of that recovery was the alliance struck in January 1804 between Charles James Fox and William Lord Grenville. It was not only to provide the foundation for the “Ministry of All the Talents” of 1806-1807, the whig opposition's sole tenure of office between 1783 and 1830, but it was to have profound effects on the activities of the whig party for at least a decade after the fall of that ministry. The arrangement and reception of the “cooperation,” as it was termed, illuminates the condition and the preoccupations of the Foxite opposition during Henry Addington's tenure in power. The alliance involved the most important political decisions Fox made in the last decade of his life, and the history of its establishment explains many of the workings of his mind after the secession. The actual proposition of association was one of the key incidents in the career of its initiator, Grenville, and it provides much information on a man who remains one of the least understood major politicans of George III's reign. The alliance has as well its own interest as a study of how two opponents with differing aspirations and ideals could form a successful union, each with motivations more complicated than the mere desire for office.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , May 1972 , pp. 24 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1972

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References

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25. BM, Fox to O'Bryen, 26 June 1803, Add. MSS, 47566, fos. 141-142. Fox was not alone in believing that Grenville and Pitt would steadily diverge; Viscount Melville thought (and hoped) the same. Melville to William Huskisson, 14 July 1803, Add. MSS, 38737, fos. 27-28.

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27. BM, Petty to Holland, 6 June 1803, Add. MSS, 51686, fo 16.

28. It was always slightly galling to Fox that the numbers as well as the unanimity of opposition depended in large measure on the Prince: see for example Durham University, Fox to Grey, postmarked 30 July 1803, Grey MSS. On two divisions of 1802 and 1803, where the Prince's interests (the amelioration of his financial situation) alone were involved, opposition mustered more than twice the votes it averaged on the other important divisions during those years. The minorities are listed in Cobbett, , Parliamentary History, XXXVI, 441–442, 1228–1229Google Scholar.

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35. Weeks later Huskisson reported that Sheridan, Tierney, and Erskine were only waiting for a good offer from Addington to break with Fox and take office. Register House, Huskisson to Melville, 15 Dec. 1803, Melville MSS., GD 51/1/74.

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37. “Many of our friends would mock at supporting a motion of the N. O. in the first instance, who might be easily brought to it if the motion arises out of Debates in which we have our share, and in general the appearance would be better.” BM, Fox to Fitzpatrick, 2 Dec. 1803, Add. MSS, 47581, fo. 138.

38. BM, Fox to Grey, 17 Dec. 1803, Add. MSS, 47565, fos. 105-106; Lord Auckland to John Beresford, 19 Dec. 1803, Add. MSS, 34456, fo. 42; Fox to Thomas Grenville, 20 Dec. 1803, Add. MSS, 41856, fo. 122.

39. The Grenville group in the Commons in 1804 comprised the following Members: Lord Althorpe, G. Berkeley, W. Elliot, Lord Ebrington, Lord Folkestone, T. Grenville, Lord Kensington, F. Laurence, Sir J. Newport, W. Poyntz, Lord Proby, Lord Temple, W. Windham, C. Wynne, Sir W. Wynne, and Sir W. Young. Elliot and Laurence were the members closest to Windham.

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45. Grenville was too much the eighteenth-century diplomat to make peace with France depend on the form of the French government, a fact whichl at least Fox realized. BM, Fox to Grey, 9 Aug. 1803, Add. MSS, 47565, fo. 91.

46. The endorsed plan is in BM, Add. MSS, 38357, fos. 54-58.

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51. Pitt did not oppose Addington systematically until February 1804, after Fox and Grenville had formed their alliance, although he was probably moved to action less by the new cooperation than by the King's third illness that month, and the consequent dangers of a regency. The detailed story of Pitt's attitudes and actions during this period require separate treatment: see Willis, Richard E., “The Politics of Parliament 1800-1806” (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1969), pp. 120–177Google Scholar.

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54. BM, Grenville to Thomas Grenville, 25 Feb. 1802, Add. MSS, 41852, fo. 99.

55. Althorpe, Thomas Grenville to Earl Spencer, 29 Oct. 1802, Althorpe MSS.

56. BM, Grenville to Thomas Grenville, 15 Nov. 1802, Add. MSS, 41852, fo. 136; also Grenville to Pitt, 16 Nov. 1802, H.M.C., Fortescue MSS, VII, 128–129Google Scholar.

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66. “He agrees also with us, & goes I think to the full extent of our opinion, as to the inadequacy of the present Government to discharge such a trust as theirs in a crisis like the present …. But he does not agree in the propriety of acting on this opinion in the way it has always hitherto been acted upon by leading Persons in Parliament, by what is called an Opposition to the Administration. He not only disclaims all possibility of his entering into any communication for that purpose with Persons from whom he has formerly differed, but even declares that with those with whom he still wishes to be connected he can take no such Engagements.” BM, Grenville to Buckingham, 11 Jan. 1804, Add. MSS, 41852, fos. 186-188.

67. Huntington Library, San Marino, Thomas Grenville to Buckingham, 26 Jan. 1804, Stowe MSS, 170.

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83. BM, Fox to Grey, 28 March 1804, Add. MSS, 47565, fo. 115. He thought only some of Norfolk's M.P.s and Robert Fellowes were definitely lost: Fox to Thomas Grenville, 27 March 1804, Add. MSS, 41856, fo. 158.

84. BM, Charles Yorke to Earl of Hardwicke, 26 April 1804, Add. MSS, 35705, fo. 276.

85. BM, Fox to Thomas Grenville, 30 March 1804, Add. MSS, 41856, fo. 159; BM, Fox to Thomas Grenville, 8 April 1804, Add. MSS, 41856, fo. 164.

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89. BM, Fox to Grey, 19 April 1804, Add. MSS, 47565, fo. 125; also Fox to Lauderdale, 30 Sept. 1805, Add. MSS, 47564, fo. 243. Pitt, for his part, told Canning in February 1804 that if the Prince came into power, and sent for Fox, and if Fox made him “fair and honourable offers” (Canning's phrase), he would have nothing to do with them. Canning to Lord G. L. Gower, 19 Feb. 1804, Granville, Countess Castalia (ed.), Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Private Correspondence 1781 to 1821 (London, 1917), I, 446–447Google Scholar.

90. A pamphlet of Foxite sympathies published between February and April 1804, Thoughts Recommendatory of a Coalition Between the Great Parliamentary Leaders, did not even mention the question of who would have the treasury or the leadership of the Commons.

91. Sheepscar Library, Leeds, Canning's “Diary,” 9 March 1804, Harewood MSS, 29d.

92. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Pitt to Melville, 29 March 1804, Pitt MSS.

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