The cases of the Maria Theresa and the America were designed, by Hardwicke, Holderness, and Newcastle, to instil confidence in the Dutch government that the Court of Prize Appeal would safeguard the Dutch neutral rights that had been agreed throughout the first part of the war. They were also designed to instil confidence in British privateers and naval captains and ensure that French colonial trade carried in neutral ships could still largely be stopped and condemned as legal prize. This chapter focuses on the two appellate cases and the legal arguments presented. These are then tied to the legal and strategic maritime thinking of Lord Hardwicke and his creation of the Rule of the War of 1756. This rule became the bedrock for how Britain would understand and negotiate neutral rights over the course of the next major European maritime wars. The basic premise of the rule was that trade that was prohibited to a neutral during times of peace would be considered by the British prize court system to be prohibited in times of war. The chapter, through an analysis of Dutch cases in the Court of Prize Appeal, examines how and why Hardwicke developed this rule.

This chapter focuses on the court cases of the Dutch ships the Maria Theresa and the America. It analyses the legal arguments behind the condemnation of each ship as legal prize and how these arguments are connected to, and differ from, Anglo-Dutch negotiations over neutral rights and the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1674. The chapter demonstrates that the Anglo-Dutch negotiations at the governmental level were led by four key British figures: William Pitt, Lord Holdernesse, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Hardwicke. Their connections with their Dutch counterparts were largely managed through Joseph Yorke who was the British representative to the Dutch Republic. These negotiations were driven by maritime strategic considerations. In contrast, early decisions taken in the High Court of Admiralty created friction between the Dutch and British governments. The Dutch believed that the condemnation of their ships was arbitrary and an abuse of Dutch neutral rights. The chapter reveals that in order to resolve this tension, the British government determined to encourage the Dutch to appeal the decisions from the High Court of Admiralty and promised that the cases would be fairly determined in the Court of Prize Appeal where decisions could be influenced and shaped by Lord Hardwicke.

This chapter is partly contextual, considering the political changes ushered in by the unexpected death of Henry Pelham in 1754, and partly textual, as it deals with Hume’s last essay on party (‘Of the Coalition of Parties’, 1758) and Edmund Burke’s first, unpublished essay on party (1757). Both essays were commentaries on high politics at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, as well as wider reflections on the meaning of partisanship and its problems for historical writing, the place of party in a constitutional system, and, in the case of Burke, the distinction between party and faction.

In the 1760s, an alternative vision of party emerged: Edmund Burke’s party of principle. This chapter considers the formation of Burke’s party, the Rockingham Whigs, in the context of George III’s accession to the throne and the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War. Burke’s close friend and writing collaborator William Burke introduced him to the circle of the Marquess of Rockingham, and when Rockingham took office as First Lord of the Treasury in July 1765, Burke became his private secretary. At the end of that year, Burke was elected as MP for Wendover and in the following years he emerged as the leading publicist of the Rockingham Whigs. This chapter considers Burke’s early writings in service of his party, especially his understudied Observations on a Late State of the Nation (1769).