The Duke of Newcastle

Although the duke of Newcastle held important offices under the crown almost without interruption from 1717 to 1766, this is the first biography surveying both his private and public lives. Conventional views of the duke are largely negative, and Browning's account of his notorious shortcomings shows clearly why this is so: he was a voluble speaker but a sloppy thinker, and he had as little dignity as he had imagination. In many ways, his was the most inept prime ministry of modern British history.

Closer investigation. however, reveals facts not always in support of the prevailing negative view. Newcastle knew how to select able aides and deserves praise for the job he did at the Treasury. The pro-American inclination he gave the Whig party in the watershed decade of the 1760's was an enduring contribution to English politics. Crafty and unreliable with his enemies, to family and friends the duke was almost pathetically loyal, and he helped them wherever he could with his immense power of patronage. His failings reflect not simply his own incompetence, but the uncongeniality of the eighteenth-century constitution to titled prime ministers as well.

Newcastle's 50-year career in high office left behind a formidable mass of documents and a fluctuating reputation that averaged out at mediocrity. Browning has allowed nether to intimidate him. Writing with precision and narrative skill, he has given us perhaps the most needed biography of any figure in modern British political history.