ABSTRACT
T h e importance of the twelve years after the fall of Walpole is more real than apparent. On the surface domestic politics were dull. In 1744 the attractive, intellectually arrogant Carteret was forced to resign from the Secretaryship of State and Henry Pelham became George IPs leading minister. His was not the personality to make an impact on the pages of history: he was too universally liked and respected; men are apt to be remembered more for the unkind things their enemies said about them. It is for this reason, even more than for his long tenure of office, that his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, is chiefly remembered. Despite real integrity and solid common sense, the latter’s mannerisms and foibles made him ‘a whetstone for wise men to sharpen their wits on5. To readers so conditioned neither Pelham nor the Duke can provide the dramatic interest that Walpole could always afford. Foreign politics seem equally dreary and frustrating. When Walpole resigned, involvement in the affairs of Maria Theresa had been added to England’s earlier quarrel with Spain. Ahead stretched the mismanaged, inconclusive War of the Austrian Succession. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended it, settled nothing, and the diplomacy of the years between 1748 and Pelham’s death in 1754 was confused, and finally rendered meaningless by the Diplomatic Revolution.
