William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam

32
William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam bigraphy, stories - Presidents

William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam : biography

30 May 1748 – 8 February 1833

William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam PC (30 May 1748 – 8 February 1833), styled Viscount Milton until 1756, was a British Whig statesman of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1782 he inherited his uncle Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham’s estates, making him one of the richest people in Britain. He played a leading part in Whig politics until the 1820s.

Ministry of All the Talents: 1806–1807

Thus begun the Ministry of All the Talents. Fitzwilliam did not take a prominent role in this new government, preferring to leave this to those who he could trust to implement policies he was in agreement with. He still opposed Fox on abolition of the slave trade but did nothing to stop the government from passing it, though he did speak in the Lords on 24 June 1806 that he "felt rather alarmed at the consequences the resolutions might produce" but "he could not help feeling disposed to support them".Smith, p. 286. Following Fox’s death in September Fitzwilliam offered to resign his office to Addington (now Viscount Sidmouth) so Lord Holland could become Lord Privy Seal. Fitzwilliam remained in the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio, with Lord Grenville saying that this was "a condition to which we all attach the highest importance". The Cabinet proposed that Fitzwilliam be made Marquess of Rockingham, with Grey writing to him on 25 September: "[It] would be particularly gratifying to myself as marking at this moment a just respect for the principles and character of the party first united under the Marquess of Rockingham, and so long supported by Fox, and not as one upon which I suppose you to be personally solicitous". Fitzwilliam replied two days later that the decision was not a Cabinet but an individual one and that Rockingham’s memory might have been honoured if the marquessate was revived in 1782 or 1783, when:

…it would have been considered as honourable to his memory and would have been gratifying to the numerous body of persons who had long been attached to his person, and who continued to adhere to his principles: for myself I can speak, that to have succeeded him as his representative and heir in his rank in the peerage, would have been in my view of the thing a great distinction, and would have formed the pride of my life. But not only the lapse of time, twenty-four long years, take away from all its effect; it is no longer the anxious desire that the name of so much virtue should not be obliterated; that it should ever be present to the world: a variety of intervening circumstances have altered the very nature of the thing, and under existing ones I must become myself a bar to the revival of his title—would it be for his honour—can I by any stretch of the imagination, bring myself to conceive, that I am reviving his dignity in the peerage when I am placing it at the tail of a Marquess of Sligo etc. etc. … All my feelings forbid it.Smith, p. 289.e

In December outbreaks of violence were occurring in Ireland, and Fitzwilliam wrote to Grey on 12 December that "one administration after another has lost the confidence of Ireland, and ours I fear will do so too; we shall do nothing till the hour of necessity is come, and then what we shall do will be done too late for any advantageous effect".Smith, p. 291. When the Cabinet unsuccessfully put forward proposals for Catholic Emancipation, the King demanded that they pledge never again propose Emancipation. They refused and the government fell.Smith, p. 293. After Grey had suggested to Lord Grenville that Fitzwilliam be offered the Garter, Lord Grenville offered it to Fitzwilliam (who accepted) on 1 January 1807 but the King refused.Smith, p. 294.

Notes

Legacy

Lord Holland said of Fitzwilliam:

With little talent and less acquirements, he was, throughout his life, one of the most considerable men in the country and a striking instance of that most agreeable truth—that courage and honesty in great situations more than supply the place of policy or talent. It was not his relationship to Lord Rockingham, though no doubt an advantage, nor his princely fortune, though a yet greater, which conferred the sort of importance he enjoyed for half a century in this country. He derived it more directly and more certainly from his goodness and generosity, and from the combination of gentleness and courage which distinguished his amiable and unpretending character. Such unblemished purity and such unobtrusive intrepidity, such generosity of feeling, firmness of purpose, and tenderness of heart, meeting in one of high station and princely fortune, commanded the affection and confidence of the public; and Lord Fitzwilliam enjoyed them, beyond even those of his own class who united much greater reach of understanding and more assiduity of business to superior personal accomplishments and advantages.Lord Stavordale (ed.), Further Memoirs of the Whig Party. 1807–1821. With Some Miscellaneous Reminiscences. By Henry Richard Vassall, Third Lord Holland (London: John Murray, 1905), p. 255.