1761 - 1762

George Grenville (1712-1770) cut his teeth in politics as one of a group of young MPs in opposition to Walpole, of whom William Pitt was the star. Pitt and he formed a close political alliance, supported by marriage ties; yet Grenville was constantly irritated by his second-fiddle status to Pitt, and when Pitt resigned as Secretary of State (and effective Prime Minister) in 1761 following disagreements with his cabinet over the war with France, Grenville chose to stay on, and to lead the government in the Commons under the unpopular premiership of the Earl of Bute. When Bute was finally forced out in 1763, he hoped to continue to dominate the ministry by making Grenville a titular prime minister in his place, while he retained the ear of George III; Grenville, however, demanded that the King should listen to him alone. For two years he struggled with John Wilkes's campaign to reverse his expulsion from the House of Commons, and the arguments over the arrangements for a regency at the onset of George III's illness. The King found his attitude to him intolerable and two years later managed to find a more congenial alternative premier in the Marquess of Rockingham.