1720 he turned his attention to political affairs, making efforts to bring parliamentary seats in Staffordshire under his control. By the late 1720's, Leveson-Gower had managed to secure a base of parliamentary support, which consisted of four constituencies: Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stafford, Lichfield and Cheadle (he served as the town mayor of Cheadle in 1721). After Leveson-Gower's father died in 1709, Leveson-Gower inherited his peerage and soon took his seat in the British House of Lords, eventually emerging as a leading figure in the Tory faction. Political career In 1740, Leveson-Gower was appointed as a Lord Justice; after the Tory-led Walpole ministry collapsed in 1742, he was appointed to the position of Lord Privy Seal, succeeding John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey and being the lone Tory politician to be promoted to such high office after the collapse. He was also appointed to the Privy Council of Great Britain on 12 May 1742 by the Carteret ministry, which was a Whig-dominated administration. Leveson-Gower's alliance with a rival political party, described by historians as "a move of considerable party political importance", soon collapsed as he resigned from his position on December 1743. However, he was reappointed as Lord Privy Seal in 1744 as part of the Broad Bottom ministry, a coalition government led by Henry Pelham and his brother Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, which stayed in power for a decade. When the Jacobite rising of 1745 broke out, Leveson-Gower personally assured King George II of Great Britain of his loyalty, raising one of the fifteen new British military regiments formed to counter a possible Jacobite invasion; in recognition of these actions, he was granted the titles of Viscount Trentham and Earl Gower by George II on 8 July 1746. However, Leveson-Gower's regiment proved unwilling to face any possibility of fighting, refusing to march beyond the nearest inn when his son-in-law Sir Richard Wrottesley raised a new Yeomanry unit to join them. In 1748, he was again appointed as a Lord Justice, being appointed again in 1750 and 1752. Leveson-Gower's continuing support of a Whig-led ministry led to increasing backlash amongst his fellow Tories and English Jacobites, who perceived John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford as having "corrupted" him; in a letter to the 4th Duke of Bedford, Leveson-Gower complained that he was being "persecuted by the gout and Jacobitism". In 1747, a protest by a group of English Jacobites at the Lichfield