Marquis of Rockingham

The Marquis of Rockingham was the 9th and 13th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He has no name, unless you count Marquis (which would mean that his middle name is "of", but it's not capitalized...hey, neither is the "bin" in Osama bin Laden!) which sounds incriminatingly French. While he was in office, America got madder and madder at the British, but it wasn't until after he left office that America changed its national anthem to Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" and then fought World War 0 for independence.

Generally speaking, then, the Marquis of Rockingham as 9th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland isn't all that exciting. Nonetheless, indie-rock outfit The Decemberists have apparently scraped up enough material on the M. of R. to write an eleven-minute prog-rock epic about him for their upcoming album, Lessons Learned From Birger Dahlerus, Stephen Colbert, William H. Crawford, Empedocles, Charles the Fat, and Other Notables. He repealed the Stamp Act of 1765, apparently. That didn't make George Washington any happier, though. Samuel Adams probably served him beer, but it seems highly likely that he peed in it first. All in all, the Marquis of Rockingham wasn't that cool of a guy during his first term.

In his second term, as the 13th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Marquis of Rockingham tried to make nice with the U.S. In fact, he surrendered to the armies of America and withdrew his troops from American soil and his ships from American waters. That was nice, albeit cowardly, of him. Then he proved that 13 is an unlucky number by dying in office.

Oh, Prime Minister the Marquis of Rockingham. 1730-1782. We don't really miss you, but thanks for giving into your apparent French ancestry by just letting America be free. We wouldn't really have wanted to have been forced to drop an atomic bomb on you like we did to Hiroshima.

We will always remember you as "the prime minister who rocked". (And so will The Decemberists.)