The phrase power behind the throne designates a person who covertly exercises power by personal influence over a ruler or government without having any formal authority.
—Cf. also éminence grise.
The phrase power behind the throne occurs, for example, in Faction fighting: The lines dividing the Tories, by Peter Walker, published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Wednesday 5th October 2022:
The IEA/TPA free-market ultras
The Institute for Economic Affairs and Taxpayers’ Alliance are longstanding advocates of what some call the Singapore-on-Thames model of slashing taxes and regulations, and have been notably influential on modern Conservatism, despite the lack of clarity over who funds them.
These are the people—MPs and party members—who propelled Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng into top office, with the power behind the throne being the thinktanks that helped incubate the ideologies of the prime minister and chancellor.
The phrase power behind the throne was ascribed to the Whig statesman William Pitt (1708-1778) by the philosopher and novelist William Godwin (1756-1836) in the following passage from The History of the Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London: Printed for the author, 1783):
He complained of a circumstance, which could only be ascertained by repeated experience, that the open treachery, that was practised against him, was abetted by secret influence; and that he found “a power behind the throne, greater, than the throne itself.”
William Godwin was referring to a speech made by William Pitt in the House of Lords on 2nd March 1770. However, it seems that, if the notion occurred in this speech, the phrase did not—this is the relevant passage, as transcribed in The North Briton (London, England) of 15th December 1770:
“All the obstacles and difficulties, which attended every great, public and popular measure, arose not from those who were out of place: they were formed, improved and supported by that invisible influence I have mentioned, and by the industry of those very dependants; first by secret treachery; then by official influence; afterwards in public councils. A long train of such practices has at length unwillingly convinced me, that there is something within the Court greater than the King himself.”
The next-earliest occurrences of the phrase power behind the throne that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From a correspondence from Paris, France, published in The Daily Advertiser and Oracle (London, England) of 3rd December 1802:
The present State of Parties completely puzzles the minor politicians, who are at a loss to conceive who are really in, and whether there is not, in the old cant, a Power behind the Throne, &c.
2-: From The Modern History of England, Continued from the Commencement of Hostilities in the Year 1803 (London: J. Stratford, 1804), by George Courtney Lyttleton:
In 1766, […] lord Chatham was called upon to form a new administration […]. He resolved to resign […] in October, 1768. He found that there was a power behind the throne (which lord Chatham had said) that was greater than the throne itself. To this unresponsible influence he could not submit.
3-: From The Court Faction, published in The Courier (London, England) of 12th May 1804:
Mr. Fox says, Mr. Addington’s Ministry was called to power by the Court Faction. Mr. Pitt, we are told, has been selected as Premier by the Court Faction, and Mr. Fox has been excluded by the Court Faction. […] The Faction of which Mr. Fox so often speaks, is, it seems, not an open, known, and ostensible party; it is “the secret advisers of the King, a power behind the Throne greater than the Throne itself,” &c. &c. All this is a mere phantom of Mr. Fox’s creation.
4-: From a footnote to Translation of a Fragment of the Eighteenth Book of Polybius, found in the Monastery of St. Laura, on Mount Athos, appended to Napoleon, and the French People under his Empire (London: Printed for Tipper and Richards, 1806):
Such was the speech of Hannibal. Polycrates a privy counsellor, and cabinet secretary* to Antiochus, having been commanded by the King to declare his opinion, [&c.].
* Secretaire du Cabinet. It would be a total misrepresentation of this office, to render it Secretary of State. […] It appears that in its commencement it was a mere mechanical post, which in the reign of its great founder, a real, not titular king, did not interfere with the rank or province of the ministry: but that it became afterwards a source of secret and low influence, forming what was known in the early history of this reign by the name of a back stairs ministry, a power behind the throne greater than the throne itself, but still without rank or office.
5-: From History of England (London: Printed for J. Johnson, W. J. & J. Richardson, R. Baldwin, [&c.], 1806), by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) et al.—the following is about Frederick North (1732-1792), who, as Prime Minister from 1770 to 1782, led Great Britain through most of the War of American Independence:
As a war minister, he did not shine: his errors exposed him to ridicule, and his misconduct deserved great censure. If, as has been asserted, he entered into the American war in repugnance to his private opinion, and suffered a court-favorite to direct him, we may justly blame his mean servility and time-serving hypocrisy. We think, however, that, whatever truth there may be in the report of his subserviency to a power behind the throne, greater than the throne itself, the war was of that description which suited his prejudices.
6-: From Coalition of Public Men, published in the Government Gazette (Madras, Tamil Nadu, India) of 24th July 1806—reprinted from Bell’s Weekly Messenger (London, England):
The ostensible Ministers are here the real and efficient Ministers; there is no meddling, jealous counteractive power behind the Throne; no double Cabinet to govern the Ministers themselves, & thwart their measures sometimes by open and daring influence, at other times by an artifice, once successfully practised, of encouraging an opposition in the House of Commons against the very men of their own appointment.
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