The Rockingham Whigs, formerly known as the Pelhamites and later known as the Portlandites, were a conservative-liberal faction of the British Whigs that existed from 1765 to 1784, with Lord Rockingham as their leader. The faction derived from Thomas Pelham-Holles' faction of the Whig Party, which controlled Britain's corrupt patronage system until King George III dismissed them in 1762 to reassert royal power and seize control of the patronage system. Pelham and his loyalists banded together to oppose Lord Bute's Tory administration by rallying the aristocratic "Old Whigs" around the younger Lord Rockingham. The Rockinghamites were dedicated to upholding the Whigs' founding principles, preventing a reassertion of royal power, and uniting with reformers of all kinds to preserve the ideals of the Glorious Revolution, and the party opposed the policies that led to the American Revolutionary War and supported reconciliation with the Thirteen Colonies. In 1782, the Rockinghamites came into power and laid the foundations for the 1783 Treaty of Paris, ending the wars with America, France, and Spain, but Rockingham's death in 1782 split the faction. Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke went into opposition, while the majority of Rockinghamites became supporters of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland's Portlandite faction. This faction broke with the leadership of Fox and joined with William Pitt the Younger in the wake of the French Revolution.