William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland

Biography

William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck was born in 1738, the eldest son of the 2nd Duke of Portland and heir through his mother to great estates. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and after a period of study in Warsaw and travel in Italy he entered the Commons for Weobley in 1761, moving to the Lords on succeeding his father as duke in 1762.

A Rockingham Whig, he was lord chamberlain in 1765-1766 and lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1782, when he pressed Parliament to repeal the Declaratory Act. In April 1783 he became the nominal head of the Fox-North coalition as prime minister; the Treaty of Paris ending the American war was signed under his ministry, which fell in December after the king turned the Lords against its India bill.

Alarmed by the French Revolution, he broke with Charles James Fox and in 1794 led the conservative Portland Whigs into William Pitt's government as home secretary. In that office he dealt with the naval mutinies of 1797 and managed the patronage that carried the Act of Union with Ireland. He was later lord president of the council and served as chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1792.

In 1807, after the fall of the Ministry of All the Talents, he again became prime minister as an acceptable figurehead for Pitt's former followers. In poor health, and with his ministry shaken by the duel between Canning and Castlereagh, he resigned in October 1809 and died weeks later.