Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle in the context of "Robert Walpole"

Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, KB, FRS (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company (EIC) rule in Bengal. He began as a "writer" (the term used then in India for an office clerk) for the EIC in 1744, however after being caught up in military action during the fall of Madras, Clive joined the EIC's private army. Clive rapidly rose through the military ranks of the EIC and was eventually credited with establishing Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was guaranteed a jagir of £90,000 (equivalent to £10,200,000 in 2023) per year, which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India in January 1767 he had a fortune of £401,102 (equivalent to £67,900,000 in 2023) which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.

Blocking impending French mastery of India, Clive improvised a 1751 military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. In 1755 he was hired by the EIC to return to India, where he secured the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England from 1760 to 1765, he used the wealth accumulated from India to obtain an Irish barony from the Prime Minister, Thomas Pelham-Holles, and a seat in Parliament via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whig party in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously done in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).

Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne was a title that was created three times, once in the Peerage of England and twice in the Peerage of Great Britain. The first grant of the title was made in 1665 to William Cavendish, 1st Marquess of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a prominent Royalist commander during the Civil War.

The related title of Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne [sic] was created once in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was conferred in 1756 on Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (of the third creation), to provide a slightly more remote special remainder. The title became extinct in 1988, a year that saw the deaths of the distantly related ninth and tenth Dukes of Newcastle-under-Lyne.

William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire (8 May 1720 – 2 October 1764), styled Lord Cavendish before 1729, and Marquess of Hartington between 1729 and 1755, was a British Whig statesman and nobleman who was briefly nominal Prime Minister of Great Britain. He was the first son of William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire and his wife, Catherine (née Hoskins). He is also a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of King Charles III through the king's maternal great-grandmother, Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne.

In October 1762, George III suspected that Devonshire and Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, were plotting against him. He had mistaken a visit by Devonshire as a tender of resignation, but George refused to see him in person. Four days later, George personally struck out Devonshire's name from the list of Privy Councillors.

Westminster School is a public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It descends from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the Norman Conquest, as documented by the Croyland Chronicle and a charter of King Offa. Continuous existence is clear from the early 14th century. Westminster was one of nine schools examined by the 1861 Clarendon Commission and reformed by the Public Schools Act 1868. The school motto, Dat Deus Incrementum, quotes 1 Corinthians 3:6: "I planted the seed... but God made it grow." The school owns playing fields and tennis courts in the centre of the 13-acre (5-hectare) Vincent Square, along which Westminster Under School is also situated.

Its academic results place it among the top schools nationally; about half its students go to Oxbridge, giving it the highest national Oxbridge acceptance rate.In the 2023 A-levels, the school saw 82.3% of its candidates score A* or A. The school is included in The Schools Index of the world's 150 best private schools and among top 30 senior schools in the UK. Among its graduates are three Nobel laureates: Edgar Adrian (Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1932), Sir Andrew Huxley (likewise in 1963) and Sir Richard Stone (Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984). During the mid-17th century, the liberal philosopher of the Enlightenment, John Locke, attended the school, and seven UK prime ministers also then attended, all belonging to the Whig or Liberal factions of British politics: Henry Pelham and his brother Thomas Pelham-Holmes, Charles Watson-Wentworth, James Waldegrave, Augustus Fitzroy, William Cavendish-Bentinck, and John Russell.

Great Britain was one of the major participants in the Seven Years' War, which for Britain in fact lasted nine years, between 1754 and 1763. British involvement in the conflict began in 1754 in what became known as the French and Indian War. However the warfare in the European theatre involving countries other than Britain and France commenced in 1756 (hence the name "Seven Years' War"). Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power, having gained all of New France in North America, ending France's role as a colonial power there. Following Spain's entry in the war in alliance with France in the third Family Compact, Britain captured the major Spanish ports of Havana, Cuba and Manila, in the Philippines in 1762, and agreed to return them in exchange for Spanish Florida. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formally ended the conflict and Britain established itself as the world's pre-eminent naval power.

The war started poorly for Britain, at the hands of France in North America during 1754–1755, and in the fall of Menorca in 1756. The same year Britain's major ally Austria switched sides and aligned itself with France, and Britain was hastily forced to conclude a new alliance with Frederick the Great's Prussia. For the next seven years these two nations were ranged against a growing number of enemy powers led by France. After a period of political instability, the rise of a government headed by the Duke of Newcastle and William Pitt the Elder provided Britain with firmer leadership, enabling it to consolidate and achieve its war aims.

The Anglo-Austrian Alliance connected the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Habsburg monarchy during the first half of the 18th century. It was largely the work of the British Whig statesman Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who considered an alliance with Austria crucial to prevent the further expansion of French power.

It lasted from 1731 to 1756 and formed part of the stately quadrille by which the Great Powers of Europe continually shifted their alliances to try to maintain the balance of power in Europe. Its collapse during the Diplomatic Revolution ultimately led to the Seven Years' War.

Henry Pelham (25 September 1694 – 6 March 1754) was a British Whig statesman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1743 until his death in 1754. He was the younger brother of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who served in Pelham's government and succeeded him as prime minister. Pelham is generally considered to have been Britain's third prime minister, after Robert Walpole and the Earl of Wilmington.

Pelham's premiership was relatively uneventful in terms of domestic affairs, although it was during his premiership that Great Britain experienced the tumult of the 1745 Jacobite uprising. In foreign affairs, Britain fought in several wars. Two of Pelham's final acts were the Jewish Naturalization Act 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalized by application to Parliament, and the Marriage Act 1753, which enumerated the minimum age of consent for marriage. On Pelham's death, his brother Newcastle took full control of the British government.