NEWCASTLE, Duke of, THOMAS PELUAM IIOLLES minister of the first two Georges, b. 1692, and representative of the noble family of the Pelhams, played a prominent, but by DO means illustrious part in the political history of his time. While a very young man, he succeeded to the family peerage by the death of his father, lord Pelham, and George I. rewarded his attachment to the house of Brunswick by creating him first, earl of Clare, and afterwards duke of Newcastle. He was made secretary of state when but thirty years old, although the king declared that he was not fit to be chamberlain to the smallest court in Germany. There was much•of the absurd and grotesque in his character. Macaulay says of him, that "Ids gait was a shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses, and in hysterical tears." Yet this man was during thirty years secretary of state, mid for near ten years first lord of the treasury! He served under sir R. Walpole, retained his secretaryship in the "broad-bottomed administration" iu 1744, and in 1754 succeeded his brother, Mr. Pelham, as head of the government. In 1757 he was com
pelled to take the first William Pitt (afterwards earl of Chatham), into his ministry, and to give him the lead in the house of commons, and the supreme direction of the war and of affairs. A succession of brilliant victories followed—Newcastle being only nom inal ?lead of the administration—and the great commoner had almost brought the war to a successful termination, when the accession of George HI. led to the resignation of Mr. Pitt, and the replacement of Newcastle, in May, 1762, by lord Bute, as head of the min istry. Newcastle declined a proffered pension, with the remark that if be could no longer serve he would not burden his country. In the Rockingham ministry, formed in 1765, Newcastle filled the office of privy seal. He died Nov. 17, 1768. His title descended to Henry, ninth earl of Lincoln, whose great-grandson,