William Windham

Who was William Windham?

William Windham PC, PC was a British Whig statesman. Elected to Parliament in 1784, Windham was attached to the remnants of the Rockinghamite faction of Whigs, whose members included his friends Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke. Windham soon became noted for his oratory in the House of Commons.

An early supporter of the French Revolution, by late 1791 he shared Burke's hostility to it and became a leading anti-Jacobin. After war was declared on France in early 1793, he broke with the antiwar, pro-Revolution Foxite Whigs to form a small ‘Third Party’ that was independent of Pitt's government but supportive of the war effort. Like Burke, Windham supported the war as an ideological crusade against Jacobinism and was an enthusiastic supporter of the French émigrés and a Bourbon restoration. In July 1794 he finally joined Pitt's government as Secretary at War but did not control war policy. He discovered that Pitt did not share his enthusiasm for the Bourbon cause and he argued in Cabinet against a peace agreement with the French Republic.

In February 1801 Windham followed Pitt in resigning from the government over the King's rejection of Catholic Emancipation.