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Pelham-Holles closet. Newcastle accepted the abuse tamely enough, but vowed vengeance. Pitt was peculiarly obnoxious to the king, so Pitt should be forced upon him as secretary at war. When the matter was broached, the king positively refused to entertain the idea. The refusal was met by the concerted resignation of the majority of the ministers in the crisis of the Jacobite rebellion. Granville and Bath, whom the king sent for, failed to form an administration, and the Pelhams returned to power, with Pitt as joint vice-treasurer of Ireland (22 Feb. 1745–6).

In the course of the year the uninterrupted successes of the French in Flanders, and the evident inclination of the Dutch for peace, produced a schism in the cabinet. Pelham and Harrington, who had resumed the seals of secretary of state for the northern department, were for peace; Newcastle stood out strongly for war; and, by maintaining a clandestine correspondence with Lord Sandwich, ambassador-extraordinary at the Hague, occasioned Harrington's resignation (28 Oct.). Similar treatment, combined with disgust at the rejection of the overtures for peace made by France through Sir John Ligonier [q. v.], led to the resignation of Harrington's successor, Lord Chesterfield, on 6 Feb. 1747–8, upon which Newcastle transferred the seals of the southern department to the Duke of Bedford, and took the seals of the northern department himself (Add. MSS. 23823 f. 361, 23827 ff. 136, 142). This arrangement involved his attendance on the king at Hanover during the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle and the subsequent negotiations. At the congress the principal difficulty arose from the claim of the empress-queen to restitution of the Netherlands in their entirety. To induce her to waive this exorbitant pretension, Newcastle at first empowered Lord Sandwich to conclude a separate treaty with France, but afterwards revoked his instructions, and bade him conciliate the court of Vienna. This undignified change of front caused the withdrawal of the Dutch plenipotentiary, Count Bentinck, and, had not Lord Sandwich adhered to his original mandate, must have ruptured the negotiations altogether. Mortally offended by this display of independence, Newcastle avenged himself by driving Sandwich, and with him his friend the Duke of Bedford, from office on 13–14 June 1751. Robert D'Arcy, fourth earl of Holderness [q. v.], who succeeded Sandwich, consented to act as Newcastle's clerk, and the supremacy of the Pelhams was established.

At this period the principal object of Newcastle's diplomacy was to perpetuate the divisions between Austria and France. With this aim he supported the election of Archduke Joseph as king of the Romans, but that project was frustrated by the lukewarmness of the court of Vienna. On Pelham's death, 6 March 1754, Newcastle succeeded him as first lord of the treasury, with Henry Fox [q. v.] as secretary at war, and the incapable Sir Thomas Robinson secretary of state for the southern department and nominal leader of the House of Commons. The real leader of the House of Commons was the attorney-general, William Murray (afterwards Lord Mansfield) [q. v.] Fox, who declined the leadership because Newcastle had insisted on dissociating it from all participation in the disposal of the secret-service money, united with Pitt in making Robinson's position intolerable. Afraid to dismiss Fox, Newcastle eventually dismissed Robinson, and put Fox in his place, conceding the point in dispute (November 1755). When Lord Chesterfield heard of this he observed: ‘The Duke of Newcastle has turned out everybody else, and now he has turned out himself.’ The augury was speedily verified. The ministry was burdened with the defence of the Hanoverian subsidiary treaties, hastily negotiated by the king on the renewal of hostilities on the continent. Though not as yet declared, war with France had already begun in America. A fleet, under Sir Edward Hawke, lay idle at Spithead for months, while ministers debated what to do with it. Misled by the feints of preparations at Brest and Dunkirk for the invasion of England, they humiliated the nation by hurrying over Hessian and Hanoverian troops, while they overlooked the real object of the French, viz. the conquest of Minorca. Their discredit was completed by the success of the French expedition; and Newcastle, deserted almost simultaneously by Fox and Murray, tendered his resignation on 26 Oct. 1756. He gave up the seals on the formation of Pitt's administration on 11 Nov., was consoled (13 Nov.) with the title of Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme, with remainder to his favourite nephew, Henry Fiennes Clinton, ninth earl of Lincoln, in tail, and retired to Claremont. He attended the House of Lords on the occasion of the debate on the bill for releasing the members of Byng's court-martial from their oath of secrecy, in which, however, he took no prominent part. Horace Walpole represents him as from first to last bent upon securing the admiral's execution, but adduces no tangible evidence. His party was still numerically strong, and on Pitt's dismissal, on 5 April 1757, he was sent for, but refused to take office without the support of Leicester House. In the end, Pitt