went into opposition. The Bedfordites supported a hard-line policy in North America, and thus opposed the Rockingham ministry's repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. When Rockingham's ministry fell in 1766, Bedford hoped to make an alliance with the new Chatham ministry, while his lieutenant Richard Rigby wished to stay in opposition along with the Grenvillites. In the end, the King's opposition to the Bedfordites meant that they stayed out, and thus the Chatham ministry was opposed by three distinct parliamentary factions – the Grenvillites, the Rockinghamites, and the Bedfordites. Notably, the Rockinghamites opposed the ministry as pursuing too hard-line a policy on North America, while Bedford and his followers felt the opposite. Nevertheless, the two factions came close to agreeing to form a coalition before disagreements about who the Leader of the Commons should be. American Revolution and decline Nevertheless, the strength of the opposition forces convinced the Duke of Grafton, who had succeeded Chatham as effective Prime Minister, that some effort must be made to bring the Bedfords into the government. This was successfully accomplished in December 1767, when Gower became Lord President and, shortly thereafter, Weymouth was made Secretary of State. Bedford himself, who was in ill-health, did not take office, and gradually withdrew from public life until his death in 1771, but the faction survived him, now led by Gower. They continued to support a hard-line policy towards the Americas, which ultimately led to the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Gower and many of the other Bedfordites resigned from the North government in late 1779 due to what they saw as North's ineffectual leadership of the war effort, but others, including Sandwich and Thurlow, stayed on. Gower continued to lead the main body of the Bedford faction, however, which finally entered the government in December 1783 as supporters of Pitt the Younger. After this, the Bedfordites ceased to be a distinguishable political faction. On the whole, neither contemporaries nor historians have looked on the Bedford faction with great favor – they have traditionally been seen as essentially rapacious job-seekers, willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder in exchange for positions. More recent scholarship has been less negative. In his article about Bedford for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Martyn Powell contends that accusations of opportunism are unfair, and that flexibility was necessary for a relatively small party like the Bedford Whigs. Powell instead views