Pelham, THE FAMILY OF, takes its name from a castle and lordship in the north-east of Hereford, and was elevated to the peerage in the person of Sir Thomas Pelham, who in 1706 was created Baron Pelham, and married Lady Grace Holles, sister of the Earl of Clare. His successor, THOMAS PELHAM HOLLES, Duke of Newcastle, and minister of the first two Georges, was born in 1693, and educated at Westminster and Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 1711 he succeeded to the vast estates of his maternal uncle the Duke of Newcastle, and next year to the peerage of his father, the first Lord Pelham. George I. rewarded his services by creating him Earl of Clare (1714) and Duke of Newcastle in Northumberland (1715). He was made Lord-lieutenant of Middlesex and Nottingham, and a Knight of the Garter in 1718, and in the same year he married Lady Henrietta Godolphin, granddaughter of the great Marlborough. In 1724 he succeeded Carteret as Secretary of State, and held the office continuously under Walpole and his successors for thirty years, although a man of no particular ability except in parliamentary tactics. In 1754 he succeeded his brother, Henry Pelham, as premier, but retired in November 1756 to give place to the Duke of Devonshire, himself being rewarded with the title of Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme, with special remainder to the Earl of Lincoln, his niece's husband. In July 1757 he was again premier, and compelled to take the first William Pitt into his ministry and to give him the lead in the House of Commons, and the supreme direction of the war and of foreign affairs. A succession of brilliant victories followed—Newcastle being only nominal head of the administration—and the great commoner had almost brought the war to a successful termination, when the accession of George III. led to the resignation of Pitt, and the replacement of Newcastle, in May 1762, by Lord Bute, as head of the ministry. Newcastle declined a proffered pension, with the remark that if he could no longer serve he would not burden his country. In the Rockingham ministry, formed in 1765, he filled for a few months the office of Privy Seal. He died in August 1768.—His younger brother, HENRY PELHAM (1696-1754), took an active part in sup- pressing the rebellion of 1715, became Secretary of State for War in 1724, and was a zealous supporter of Walpole. In 1743 he was made head of a ministry as First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Events during his ministry were the war of the Austrian succession, the Jacobite rebellion of the '45, the successful financial bill of 1750 (see GEORGE II.), the reform of the calendar, and Lord Hardwick's Marriage Act. His father's ducal title descended to Henry, ninth Earl of Lincoln, whose great-grandson,
HENRY PELHAM-CLINTON, fifth Duke of Newcastle, and twelfth Earl of Lincoln, was born 22d May 1811, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He represented South Notts in parliament from 1832 to 1846, when he was ousted by the influence of his father, the fourth duke, for supporting Sir Robert Peel in his free-trade measures. He was a Lord of the Treasury in the brief Conservative administration of 1834-35, and First Commissioner of Woods and Forests in the Peel administration, 1841-46. He was then made Irish Secretary, but went out of office with his chief a few months afterwards. He succeeded to the dukedom in 1851, and returned to office in 1852, filling the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Aberdeen government. The war with Russia broke out, and in June 1854 it was found necessary to create a Secretary of State for War, and the new office was assigned to Newcastle. The terrible sufferings of the British army before Sebastopol in the winter months of 1854 raised a storm of popular discontent, and when the House of Commons determined to inquire into the conduct of the war the duke resigned. Newcastle was Colonial Secretary in the second administration of Lord Palmerston, and held the seals with general approval from 1859 till his death, 18th October 1864.