page_title: Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
section_title: Opposition: 1766–1782
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham / Opposition: 1766–1782
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Watson-Wentworth, Second Marquis of Rockingham
context_page_description: Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, KG, PC, FRS, styled The Hon. Charles Watson-Wentworth before 1733, Viscount Higham between 1733 and 1746, Earl of Malton between 1746 and 1750 and The Marquess of Rockingham in 1750 was a British Whig statesman, most notable for his two terms as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He became the patron of many Whigs, known as the Rockingham Whigs, and served as a leading Whig grandee. He served in only two high offices during his lifetime, but was nonetheless very influential during his one and a half years of service.
context_section_description: Rockingham spent the next sixteen years in opposition. He was a keen supporter of constitutional rights for colonists.
  Rockingham wrote to Edmund Burke on 14 February 1771: "I fear indeed the future struggles of the people in defence of their Constitutional Rights will grow weaker and weaker. It is much too probable that the power and influence of the Crown will increase rapidly. We live at the period when for the first time since the Revolution, the power and influence of the Crown is held out, as the main and chief and only support of Government. If we...do not exert now, we may accelerate the abject state to which the Constitution may be reduced". On 24 May 1771 Benjamin Franklin arrived from the Rectory of Thornhill, where he had stayed with the Rev. John Michell, vicar to Rockingham's kinsman, fellow leading politician and keen advocate of colonists' rights Sir George Savile. Rockingham wrote to Augustus Keppel on 3 November 1779, saying that he believed the war against America could not be won, that the government was corrupt but not unpopular, and that the longer this continued the greater the danger to the liberties and the constitution of Britain: "Perhaps a total change of men and measures, & system in the Government: of this country might have effect on the councils of some foreign countries...who might think that it was no longer a Court system to combat, but that the whole nation wd; united & make the utmost efforts".
  Rockingham was recruited to hunt down the Cragg Vale Coiners. He had thirty Coiners arrested by Christmas Day 1769.
caption: Lord Rockingham painted by Joshua Reynolds in 1768
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