William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam : biography

However in the general election Pitt won a large majority. Fitzwilliam repudiated Lord Shelburne’s attempt to get him the office of Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire. As he wrote to Lady Fitzwilliam on 4 September: "Having experienced very closely and very attentively his Lordship’s conduct of late, and consequently having formed an opinion of his present principles, I can see no reason to expect that as an honest man I shall ever be able to give support to his administration, and therefore as a fair one I must decline receiving any favour at his hands".Smith, pp. 56–57. Fitzwilliam was now considered the Duke of Portland’s deputy, and was a key figure in Whig councils and was frequently the first Whig speaker in parliamentary debates.Smith, p. 87. On 18 July he attacked Pitt’s trade policies with Ireland as "a system that overturned the whole policy of the navigation and trade of Great Britain", satisfying neither Britain nor Ireland. He said he spoke "as an Englishman" when he criticised the opening up of British and colonial markets to Ireland as detrimental to Britain and "as an Irishman" when he criticised the considerable burdens Ireland would be placed under. Ireland’s grievances were constitutional not economic, and he cited the government’s plan to prevent public meetings.Smith, pp. 88–89. Fitzwilliam was chosen to open the debate on the address at the opening of the next session of Parliament in 1786, and said that "The wisdom of Ireland had accomplished what the prudence of this country could not achieve".Smith, p. 89. In 1787 Fitzwilliam spoke only once, in opposition to trade with Portugal as this would be detrimental to Yorkshire manufacturers.Smith, pp. 89–90.

In 1785 Fitzwilliam had been depicted in a magnificent portrait in oils by the leading painter of the day, Sir Joshua Reynolds, President of the Royal Academy, an engraving of which, by Joseph Grozer dated 1786, is shown here. The portrait, with its turbulent sky, alludes to both the emotional turmoil the Earl had relatively recently suffered on the death of his uncle, Rockingham, and the political turmoil in which he had become embroiled following the dismissal of Fox and North from government at the end of 1783. Set in a landscape background, it also alludes to Fitzwilliam’s wider responsibilities, which extended beyond the Parliamentary debating chamber.D. Wilson, ‘Art, inheritance, law and attribution: the rediscovered portrait of Earl Fitzwilliam by Sir Joshua Reynolds, PRA’, The British Art Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 3 [Winter 2012/13], pp. 32-52, at p. 35. As Ernest Smith has perceptively noted, ‘Fitzwilliam grew up to be the typical eighteenth-century aristocrat – a man to whom politics was a natural responsibility due to his order, his family and his country, but not a field for the display of ambition. He was always fonder of the country than the town, of the local rather than the national arena. He saw his role throughout his life as that of leader of his local society and a link between the party and the public…Fitzwilliam’s world…was that of the great estate owner…. Agents, tenantry, mortgages, leases and properties were his daily concern, and to these his life had in some measure to be dedicated.’Smith, p. 5. The portrait of Fitzwilliam by Reynolds had been missing since 1920 and was rediscovered in 2011. Wilson, pp. 32-52.

On 8 April 1788 Fitzwilliam wrote to Zouch on the Whigs’ impeachment of Warren Hastings for his rule in India: "…disgraced, degraded, run down as they were, scarcely suffered to speak in the infancy of the present Parliament, this very Parliament has already conferred on them the distinguished duty of vindicating the justice of the nation, and of rescuing the name of Englishmen from the obloquy of tyranny over the inoffensive and the impotent".Smith, p. 112.

The Regency Crisis of 1788–89 led to an outbreak of support for Pitt in Yorkshire in the aftermath of Fox’s assertion that the Prince of Wales had as much right to the throne during the King’s illness as if he had inherited it. Zouch countered Fitzwilliam’s proposal for a popular address in favour of the Prince of Wales’ hereditary right: "[it would be a] very hazardous experiment".Smith, p. 105. Fitzwilliam opened the debate in the Lords on 15 December 1788, claiming that the Prince’s right was "a question which…could not be brought under discussion without producing effects which every well-meaning and considerate individual must wish to avoid".Smith, p. 106. In January 1789 when the Commons’ resolutions in favour of a Regency Bill (which would restrict the Prince of Wales’ regal authority) came up to the Lords, Fitzwilliam said they would "reduce the constitution from the principles of a limited monarchy, and change it to the principles of a republic". He criticised Lord Camden’s proposal that the Regent could create new peers only if the two Houses of Parliament consented: "[This was] in the highest degree unconstitutional, and he should, in consequence, think it his indispensable duty to come forward with a declaration condemning all such doctrines as repugnant to the principles of the British constitution".Smith, pp. 106–107. If the Duke of Portland had formed an administration upon the Prince of Wales becoming Regent, Fitzwilliam would have been First Lord of the Admiralty, although Fitzwilliam was relieved when the King recovered from his illness and prospects of assuming this office subsequently disappeared.Smith, p. 107.