GOV.UK
Past Prime Ministers
Show past Prime Ministers
52 Past Prime Ministers
- Gordon Brown
- Tony Blair
- Sir John Major
- Baroness Margaret Thatcher
- James Callaghan
- Harold Wilson
- Sir Edward Heath
- Sir Alec Douglas-Home
- Harold Macmillan
- Sir Anthony Eden
- Sir Winston Churchill
- Clement Attlee
- Neville Chamberlain
- Stanley Baldwin
- James Ramsay MacDonald
- Andrew Bonar Law
- David Lloyd George
- Herbert Henry Asquith
- Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
- Arthur James Balfour
- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
- Archibald Primrose 5th Earl of Rosebery
- William Ewart Gladstone
- Benjamin Disraeli The Earl of Beaconsfield
- Edward Smith Stanley 14th Earl of Derby
- Lord John Russell 1st Earl Russell
- Henry John Temple 3rd Viscount Palmerston
- George Hamilton Gordon Earl of Aberdeen
- Sir Robert Peel 2nd Baronet
- William Lamb 2nd Viscount Melbourne
- Arthur Wellesley 1st Duke of Wellington
- Charles Grey 2nd Earl Grey
- Frederick Robinson Viscount Goderich
- George Canning
- Robert Banks Jenkinson Earl of Liverpool
- Spencer Perceval
- William Bentinck Duke of Portland
- William Wyndham Grenville 1st Baron Grenville
- William Pitt 'The Younger'
- Henry Addington 1st Viscount Sidmouth
- William Petty 2nd Earl of Shelburne
- Lord Frederick North
- Augustus Henry Fitzroy 3rd Duke of Grafton
- William Pitt 'The Elder' 1st Earl of Chatham
- Charles Watson-Wentworth 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
- George Grenville
- John Stuart 3rd Earl of Bute
- Thomas Pelham-Holles 1st Duke of Newcastle
- William Cavendish Duke of Devonshire
- Henry Pelham
- Spencer Compton 1st Earl of Wilmington
- Sir Robert Walpole
William Petty 2nd Earl of Shelburne Whig 1782 to 1783
Born
2 May 1737, Dublin, Ireland
Died
7 May 1805, London
Dates in office
1782 to 1783
Political party
Whig
Interesting facts
In power at the time of the treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolutionary War/American War of Independence.
“The sun of Great Britain will set whenever she acknowledges the independence of America – the independence of America would end in the ruin of England.”
In the 1760s Lord Shelburne spent 2 years as Pitt’s Secretary of State, and in the late 1770s he led the Whigs in Opposition.
He formed a government as Prime Minister on Lord Rockingham’s death in 1782, with the 23-year-old Pitt the Younger as his Chancellor.
During his short term he succeeded in securing peace with America, France and Spain; presided over the beginning of Britain’s trade recovery, and put forward a programme of public service reform.
An intellectual figure, Lord Shelburne is credited with establishing some early reformist ideas. He was less appreciated in his own time, being considered devious and untrustworthy.