The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A Case-Study in Eighteenth-Century Political Argument and Public Opinion

Abstract

Few politicians can have been as maligned, insulted and manhandled as John Stuart, third earl of Bute. Before 1760, cosseted within the confines of the Prince of Wales's court at Leicester House, this former Scottish representative peer was of little public note although he had acted as the lifeline between Pitt and the reversionary interest between 1755 and 1758. In London society he was known for his intellectual pretensions (he was a very competent botanist), his haughty airs, and a shapely figure which was displayed to such good effect in the theatrical productions held under the auspices of the Princess Dowager. It was only after 1760, when it became abundantly clear that the youthful George — if not his mother - was infatuated with Bute, that the royal favourite was exposed to the bleak winds of political hostility,. Admittedly there were rumours before George's accession about the subsequently notorious liaison between Bute and the Princess Dowager, rumours that Sir John Pringle told Boswell emanated from the intrigues of Bute's rivals at Leicester House. But these were a mere foretaste of what was to come: after 1760, whether Bute was serving the king (1761–3) or out of office, he was attacked by the mob, threatened with assassination, vilified in pamphlets, prints, newspapers, songs, plays, and handbills, and effectively rejected as a potential ally by all the leading politicians of the day except for the none too politically respectable Henry Fox. The bulk of this criticism was levelled in the 1760s, but even after 1770 the so-called ‘Northern Machiavel’ was under withering if increasingly sporadic fire, and as late as the 1780s vestigial elements of the old hostility remained.