On This Day

15 February 1886

John Morley and Henry Campbell-Bannerman attend their first Cabinet

Morley recorded that he thought it ‘rather dull’; the chief entertainment appears to have been when William Harcourt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, raised a motion and passed a note to Joseph Chamberlain asking, ‘why the Devil don’t you support me on this?’ – as apparently Chamberlain had promised he would. Chamberlain wrote a note in reply – ‘I saw you were getting on swimmingly, so I seized the opportunity to take a short but refreshing nap’.

Related histories

• Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 1836-1908