The Commons' Address of Thanks in Reply to the King's Speech, 13 November 1755: Rank and Status Versus Politics

The 1750s has been seen by some, most notably J.C.D. Clark,¹ as the decade which witnessed the break up of the first party system. Within this period the years 1755 to 1756 were particularly important for they witnessed a climax in the struggle for the control of the government between the 'prime minister', the duke of Newcastle, and Secretary of State Henry Fox on the one hand and Paymaster General of the Forces William Pitt the elder on the other. The opening day of the 1755-6 parliamentary session even saw several whig ministers and officeholders voting against the whig administration of which they were a part. The two divisions in the house of commons on 13 November 1755 were on the wording of the address of thanks for the king's speech opening parliament, and were concerned with the proposed financial subsidies to the German state of Hesse and to Russia in a recently negotiated treaty.² The ministry won by comfortable majorities and on the 20th the offending ministers, including Pitt and Henry Legge, chancellor of the exchequer, were sacked. This triumph for the ministry in the Commons was not unexpected as the pre-sessional organization of M.P.s by Fox and, above all, by Newcastle, ensured the victories in the divisions. Newcastle, a man of a nervous disposition, prone to self-doubt and occasionally panic, was none the less, and perhaps because of his temperament, a master of detailed organization and micro-management both in the Commons and the house of lords.

This paper will look at the duke's management in the build-up to this parliamentary crisis, and at a previously unnoticed aspect concerning the address in the Commons, the organization of which took up a significant amount of time of the leading ministers. This neglected aspect was the question of the importance of rank, title and status versus political necessity or convenience in the choice of a mover and a seconder of the address in the Commons, as raised by the lord chancellor, Philip Yorke, 1^st earl of Hardwicke.

While it was largely true that 'to reach the top in the House of Commons, debating skill, the ability to attune oneself to the moods of the House and to understand its business and procedure, were of far greater importance than social standing', it is going too far to say 'On the floor of the House it was every man for himself, and the devil take his pedigree and his connexions.'³ Both Newcastle and Fox, to some extent, shared Hardwicke's view that rank and status ought to be taken into account in some of the procedures of the lower House.

1

The vote of confidence in the ministry at the opening debate of a session, consisting of the address of thanks to the king's speech, was an occasion 'of formality as well as political significance'. The procedure had become custom in the 1720s: the M.P.s

heard the Speech, read by the sovereign himself or the Lord Chancellor, in the House of Lords: and after they had returned to their own chamber, the Speaker read it out twice again. An Address of Thanks was moved and seconded by members selected beforehand by the administration. The proposer, who indicated 'the heads of the address' in his speech, subsequently became Chairman of the Select Committee appointed to draw up the Address. . . . The Address was usually proposed and seconded by officeholders, or members aspiring to office.⁴

This was the theory, but in times of crisis or political factionalism all did not necessarily go off smoothly. One such occasion was the opening of the 1755-6 session. For not only was there, according to Horace Walpole, 'a tempest in the Commons; they did not rise till near five in the morning; the longest debate on record, except on the Westminster election in 1741' but '[t]he question was opened disadvantageously for the court by the impudence of Lord Hillsborough, who...