Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool
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PC FRS | |
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Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | |
In office 8 June 1812 – 9 April 1827 | |
Monarchs | |
Regent | George, Prince Regent (1812–1820) |
Preceded by | Spencer Perceval |
Succeeded by | George Canning |
Secretary of State for War and the Colonies | |
In office 1 November 1809 – 11 June 1812 | |
Prime Minister | Spencer Perceval |
Preceded by | The Viscount Castlereagh |
Succeeded by | The Earl Bathurst |
Leader of the House of Lords | |
In office 25 March 1807 – 9 April 1827 | |
Prime Minister |
|
Preceded by | The Lord Grenville |
Succeeded by | The Viscount Goderich |
In office 17 August 1803 – 5 February 1806 | |
Prime Minister | |
Preceded by | Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs |
In office 20 February 1801 – 14 May 1804 | |
Prime Minister | Henry Addington |
Preceded by | The Lord Grenville |
Succeeded by | The Lord Harrowby |
Personal details | |
Born | Robert Banks Jenkinson 7 June 1770 London, England |
Died | 4 December 1828 Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England | (aged 58)
Resting place | Hawkesbury Parish Church, Gloucestershire, England |
Political party | Tory |
Spouses | |
Parent | Charles Jenkinson (father) |
Education | Charterhouse School |
Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
Signature | |
Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool,
As prime minister, Jenkinson called for repressive measures at domestic level to maintain order after the
Important events during his tenure as prime minister included the War of 1812 with the United States, the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions against the French Empire, the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars at the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, the Trinitarian Act 1812 and the emerging issue of Catholic emancipation. Despite being called "the Arch-mediocrity" by a later Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Scholars rank him highly among all British prime ministers.[1]
Early life
Jenkinson was baptised on 29 June 1770 at
Jenkinson was educated at Charterhouse School and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1787.[6][7] In the summer of 1789, Jenkinson spent four months in Paris to perfect his French and enlarge his social experience. He returned to Oxford for three months to complete his terms of residence, and in May 1790 was created Master of Arts.
Early career (1790–1812)
Member of Parliament
He won election to the
House of Commons
With the help of his father's influence, and his political talent, he rose relatively quickly in the Tory government. In February 1792 he gave the reply to Samuel Whitbread's critical motion on the government's Russian policy. He delivered several other speeches during the session and was a strong opposer of abolitionism and William Wilberforce. He served as a member of the Board of Control for India from 1793 to 1796.
In the defence movement that followed the outbreak of hostilities with France, Jenkinson was one of the first of the ministers of the government to enlist in the militia. He became a
In 1797 the then Lord Hawkesbury was the cavalry commander of the Cinque Ports Light Dragoons who ran amok following a protest against the
His parliamentary attendance also suffered from his reaction when his father angrily opposed his projected marriage with Lady Louisa Hervey, daughter of the Earl of Bristol. After Pitt and the King had intervened on his behalf the wedding finally took place at Wimbledon on 25 March 1795. In May 1796, when his father was created Earl of Liverpool, he took the courtesy title of Lord Hawkesbury and remained in the Commons. He became Baron Hawkesbury in his own right and was elevated to the House of Lords in November 1803 in recognition for his work as Foreign Secretary.[citation needed] He also served as Master of the Mint (1799–1801).[6]
Cabinet
Foreign Secretary
In
War Secretary
Lord Liverpool (as he had now become by the death of his father in December 1808) accepted the position of Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in Spencer Perceval's government in 1809. Liverpool's first step on taking up his new post was to elicit from General Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) a strong enough statement of his ability to resist a French attack to persuade the cabinet to commit themselves to the maintenance of his small force in Portugal. In 1810 Liverpool was made a colonel of militia.[10]
Prime Minister (1812–1827)
Appointment
After the
The Liverpool government
Liverpool's government included some of the future leaders of Britain, such as Lord Castlereagh, George Canning, the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, and William Huskisson. Liverpool was considered an experienced and skilled politician, and held together the liberal and reactionary wings of the Tory party, which his successors, Canning, Goderich and Wellington, had great difficulty with.
War
Congress of Vienna
Liverpool's ministry was a long and eventful one. At the beginning of his premiership, Liverpool was faced directly with conflict, the
The Corn Laws
Home trouble
Inevitably taxes rose to compensate for borrowing and to pay off the national debt, which led to widespread disturbance between 1812 and 1822. Around this time, the group known as
Agriculture remained a problem because good harvests between 1819 and 1822 had brought down prices and evoked a cry for greater protection. When the powerful agricultural lobby in Parliament demanded protection in the aftermath, Liverpool gave in to political necessity. Under governmental supervision the notorious Corn Laws of 1815 were passed prohibiting the import of foreign wheat until the domestic price reached a minimum accepted level. Liverpool, however, was in principle a free-trader, but had to accept the bill as a temporary measure to ease the transition to peacetime conditions. His chief economic problem during his time as Prime Minister was that of the nation's finances.[citation needed]
The interest on the
Liverpool argued for the abolition of the wider slave trade at the Congress of Vienna, and at home he supported the repeal of the
Assassination attempt
The reports of the secret committees he obtained in 1817 pointed to the existence of an organised network of disaffected political societies, especially in the manufacturing areas. Liverpool told Peel that the disaffection in the country seemed even worse than in 1794. Because of a largely perceived threat to the government, temporary legislation was introduced. He suspended
Catholic emancipation
During the 19th century, and, in particular, during Liverpool's time in office,
The decision of 1812 to remove the issue from collective cabinet policy, followed in 1813 by the defeat of Grattan's Roman
By the date of Sir Francis Burdett's Catholic Relief Bill in 1825, emancipation looked a likely success. Indeed, the success of the bill in the Commons in April, followed by
Retirement and death
Jenkinson's first wife, Louisa, died at 54. He married again on 24 September 1822 to
Legacy
No one would claim Liverpool as a man of genius, but he had qualities of tact, firmness and endurance to which historians have rarely done full justice: and thus it came about that he held the office of Premier over a period more than twice as long as any other successor of Pitt, long after peace had been restored to Europe. One reason for his ascendancy was that he had an unrivalled insight into the whole machinery of government, having filled successively every Secretaryship of State, and tested the efficiency and mutual relations of politicians and officials alike.... He had a much wider acquaintance with foreign affairs than many who have held his high office.[19]
John W. Derry says Jenkinson was:
[A] capable and intelligent statesman, whose skill in building up his party, leading the country to victory in the war against Napoleon, and laying the foundations for prosperity outweighed his unpopularity in the immediate post-Waterloo years.[20]
Jenkinson was the first British Prime Minister to regularly wear long trousers instead of breeches. He entered office at the age of 42 years and one day, making him younger than all of his successors. Liverpool served as Prime Minister for a total of 14 years and 305 days, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister of the 19th century. As of 2023, none of Liverpool's successors has served longer.
In London, Liverpool Street and Liverpool Road, Islington, are named after Lord Liverpool. The Canadian town of Hawkesbury, Ontario, the Hawkesbury River and the Liverpool Plains, New South Wales, Australia, Liverpool, New South Wales, and the Liverpool River in the Northern Territory of Australia were also named after Lord Liverpool.[21]
Lord Liverpool, as Prime Minister to whose government Nathan Mayer Rothschild was a lender, was portrayed by American actor Gilbert Emery in the 1934 film The House of Rothschild.
Lord Liverpool's ministry (1812–1827)
- Lord Liverpool – First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords
- Lord Eldon – Lord Chancellor
- Lord Harrowby – Lord President of the Council
- Lord Westmorland – Lord Privy Seal
- Secretary of State for the Home Department
- Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the House of Commons
- Lord Bathurst – Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
- Lord Melville – First Lord of the Admiralty
- Nicholas Vansittart – Chancellor of the Exchequer
- Lord Mulgrave – Master-General of the Ordnance
- Lord Buckinghamshire – President of the Board of Control
- Charles Bathurst – Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
- Lord Camden– minister without portfolio
Changes
- Late 1812 – Lord Camden leaves the Cabinet
- September 1814 – William Wellesley-Pole (Lord Maryborough from 1821), the Master of the Mint, enters the Cabinet
- February 1816 – George Canning succeeds Lord Buckinghamshire at the Board of Control
- January 1818 – F. J. Robinson, the President of the Board of Trade, enters the Cabinet
- January 1819 – The Duke of Wellington succeeds Lord Mulgrave as Master-General of the Ordnance. Lord Mulgrave becomes minister without portfolio
- 1820 – Lord Mulgrave leaves the cabinet
- January 1821 – Charles Bathurst succeeds Canning as President of the Board of Control, remaining also at the Duchy of Lancaster
- January 1822 – Robert Peel succeeds Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary
- February 1822 – Charles Williams-Wynn succeeds Charles Bathurst at the Board of Control. Bathurst remains at the Duchy of Lancaster and in the Cabinet
- September 1822 – Following the suicide of Lord Londonderry, George Canning becomes Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons
- January 1823 – Vansittart, elevated to the peerage as Lord Bexley, succeeds Charles Bathurst as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. F. J. Robinson succeeds Vansittart as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is succeeded at the Board of Trade by William Huskisson
- 1823 – Lord Maryborough, the Master of the Mint, leaves the Cabinet. His successor in the office is not a Cabinet member
Arms
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References
- ISBN 978-0-19-966642-3.
- ^ D. Leonard 2008 Nineteenth-Century British Premiers: Pitt to Rosebery. Palgrave Macmillan: p. 82.
- ^ Blake, Robert (18 October 1984). "Weathering the storm". London Review of Books. Vol. 6, no. 19. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
- ^ "Edward Croke's wife, Isabella Beizor (c. 1710–80), was a Portuguese Indian creole, thus giving Liverpool a trace (probably about one sixteenth, but maybe less) of Indian blood." Hutchinson, Martin, Britain's Greatest Prime Minister: Lord Liverpool
- ^ "It is true that [Lord Liverpool's] maternal grandmother was a Calcutta-born woman, Frances Croke ... there is no evidence that her half-Portuguese mother, Isabella Beizor, was Eurasian." Brendon, de Vyvyen, Children of the Raj
- ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911.
- Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
- ^ Miller, James (1844). "Dreadful Riot and Military Massacre at Tranent, on the First Balloting for the Scots Militia for the County of Haddington". The Lamp of Lothian, or, The history of Haddington: in connection with the public affairs of East Lothian and of Scotland, from the earliest records to the present period. Haddington: James Allan – via Scottish Mining.
- ^ a b "Lord Liverpool". Victorian Web. 4 March 2002.
- ^ JENKINSON, Hon. Robert Banks (1770–1828), of Coombe Wood, nr. Kingston, Surr. | History of Parliament Online "The History of Parliament" article by R. G. Thorne
- ^ Marjie Bloy (4 March 2002). "Lord Liverpool". The Victorian Web.
- ^ W. R. Brock (1967). Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism 1820 to 1827. CUP Archive. p. 3.
- ^ Lewis, Richard (1874). "History of the life-boat, and its work". MacMillan & Co. Retrieved 8 December 2020 – via Internet Archive.
- ISBN 978-1-135-33700-1.
- doi:10.2307/4051594
- ISBN 978-0-19-861379-4.
- ^ "Robert Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool". Archived from the original on 30 March 2015. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
- ^ "Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Edinburgh. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
- ^ R. W. Seton-Watson, Britain in Europe (1789–1914): A Survey of Foreign Policy (1937) (1937), p. 29.
- ^ John Cannon, ed. (2009). The Oxford Companion to British History. p. 582.[ISBN missing]
- ^ "Place Names Register Extract – Liverpool River". NT Place Names Register. Northern Territory Government. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
Further reading
- Brock, W. R. (1943). Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism 1820 to 1827. CUP Archive. p. 2.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 804. This contains an assessment of his character and achievements.
- Cookson, J. E. Lord Liverpool's administration: the crucial years, 1815–1822 (1975)
- Gash, Norman. Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool 1770–1828 (1984)
- Gash, Norman. "Jenkinson, Robert Banks, second earl of Liverpool (1770–1828)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed. 2008 accessed 20 June 2014
- Gash, Norman. "Lord Liverpool: a private view," History Today (1980) 30#5 pp 35–40
- Hay, William Anthony. Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (The Boydell Press, 2018).
- Hilton, Boyd. A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (New Oxford History of England) (2006) scholarly survey
- Hilton, Boyd. "The Political Arts of Lord Liverpool." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Fifth Series) 38 (1988): 147–170. online
- Hutchinson, Martin. Britain's Greatest Prime Minister: Lord Liverpool (Cambridge, The Lutterworth Press, 2020).
- Petrie, Charles. Lord Liverpool and His Times (1954)
- Plowright, John. Regency England: The Age of Lord Liverpool (Routledge, 1996) "The Lancaster Pamphlets".
- Sack, James J. The Grenvillites, 1801–29: Party Politics and Factionalism in the Age of Pitt and Liverpool (1991)
- Seton-Watson, R. W. Britain in Europe (1789–1914): A Survey of Foreign Policy (1937) online free
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl of Liverpool
- Earl of Liverpool Prime Minister's Office (archived 12 November 2008)
- "Earl of Liverpool" by Prime Minister's Office (archived 12 November 2008)
- Portraits of Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- "Archival material relating to Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool". UK National Archives.