1757 caretaker ministry

The caretaker ministry was the government of Great Britain for a short time in 1757, during the Seven Years' War.

In 1756, King George II of Great Britain was reluctantly compelled to accept a ministry dominated by William Pitt the Elder as Secretary of State. The nominal head of this ministry, as First Lord of the Treasury, was William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire.

On 6 April 1757, following Pitt's opposition to the execution of Admiral Byng, the King, who detested Pitt, dismissed him and his brother-in-law Lord Temple, who had been First Lord of the Admiralty. The result of these events was to demonstrate beyond doubt that the "Great Commoner" (as Pitt was sometimes known) was indispensable to the formation of a ministry strong enough to prosecute a major war.

Devonshire was left at the head of a government that was manifestly far too weak to survive long, particularly during a time of war. Horace Walpole in his Memoirs of the Reign of King George III called it "a mutilated, enfeebled, half-formed system".

One of the major problems of the caretaker ministry was that it included no figure capable of taking the lead in the House of Commons. It also lacked the support of the most significant factions in the House of Commons.

Devonshire recognised that it was necessary to reconcile Pitt and his old political enemy Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who led the strongest Whig faction in Parliament, but who Pitt had insisted be excluded from the 1756–57 ministry.

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