1830-1859
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Lord John Russell (Earl Russell), 1792-1878
The leading Liberal politician from the mid-1830s to the mid-1850s, Russell was twice Prime Minister; he was associated particularly with the issues of parliamentary, educational and Irish reform. He was a Foxite Whig who updated Fox’s attitudes to make them more relevant to the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and added to them a…
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Viscount Melbourne (William Lamb), 1779-1848
Right from his London birth on 15 March 1779, at Melbourne House in Piccadilly, William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, was at the centre of Whig social circles. The second son of Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne, he followed a normal early life for sons of Whig magnates Eton, Cambridge University, and education for a legal…
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Earl Grey (Charles Grey), 1764-1845
Charles Grey, second Earl Grey, Viscount Howick and Baron Grey, was the Prime Minister who oversaw the Great Reform Act of 1832, which overhauled the country’s parliamentary electoral system and was the culmination of two years of intense political crisis. Born on 13 March 1764, at Fallodon in Northumberland, his youth was spent in a…
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The Day Parliament Burned Down
In the early evening of 16 October 1834, a huge ball of fire exploded through the roof of the Houses of Parliament, creating a blaze so enormous that it could be seen by the King and Queen at Windsor, and from stagecoaches on top of the South Downs. In front of hundreds of thousands of…
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Radical failure
Review of Miles Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism 1847-1860 (Oxford University Press, 1995).
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Gladstone as Chancellor
The Exchequer brought fame to Gladstone but in return Gladstone raised the office to the forefront of politics.
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Report: The repeal of the Corn Laws
Report LDHG meeting of February 1996, with Professor John Vincent.
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Richard Cobden and British Imperialism
Cobden’s critique of British imperialism.
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Exploding the delusion of protection
A speech made by Richard Cobden in March 1845, near the climax of the campaign to abolish the Corn Laws.