Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury KG GCVO PC FRS DL (/ˈɡæskɔɪn ˈsɪsəl/;[1][a] 3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), known as Lord Salisbury, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen years. He was also Foreign Secretary before and during most of his tenure. He avoided alignments or alliances, maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".
"Lord Salisbury" and "The Marquess of Salisbury" redirect here. For other holders of the title, see Marquess of Salisbury.
The Marquess of Salisbury
Victoria
William Ewart Gladstone
Victoria
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
Himself
Himself
Arthur Balfour
Himself
Himself
The Earl of Rosebery
Himself
The Earl of Rosebery
The Earl Granville
The Earl of Derby
- William Ewart Gladstone
- The Earl of Rosebery
- William Ewart Gladstone
- The Earl of Rosebery
William Ewart Gladstone
The Earl of Rosebery
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
Benjamin Disraeli
William Ewart Gladstone
3 February 1830
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England
22 August 1903 (aged 73)
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England
- James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury (father)
- Frances Mary Gascoyne (mother)
Eton College (did not finish)
Lord Robert Cecil, later known as Lord Salisbury, was first elected to the House of Commons in 1854 and served as Secretary of State for India in Lord Derby's Conservative government 1866–1867. In 1874, under Disraeli, Salisbury returned as Secretary of State for India, and, in 1878, was appointed foreign secretary, and played a leading part in the Congress of Berlin. After Disraeli's death in 1881, Salisbury emerged as the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, with Sir Stafford Northcote leading the party in the Commons. He succeeded William Ewart Gladstone as prime minister in June 1885, and held the office until January 1886.
When Gladstone came out in favour of Home Rule for Ireland, Salisbury opposed him and formed an alliance with the breakaway Liberal Unionists, winning the subsequent general election. His biggest achievement in this term was obtaining the majority of the new territory in Africa during the Scramble for Africa, avoiding a war or serious confrontation with the other powers. He remained as prime minister until Gladstone's Liberals formed a government with the support of the Irish nationalists at the 1892 general election. The Liberals, however, lost the 1895 general election, and Salisbury for the third and last time became prime minister. He led Britain to victory in a bitter, controversial war against the Boers, and led the Unionists to another electoral victory in 1900. He relinquished the premiership to his nephew Arthur Balfour in 1902 and died in 1903. He was the last prime minister to serve from the House of Lords throughout the entirety of his premiership.[b][2]
Historians agree that Salisbury was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs, with a wide grasp of the issues. Paul Smith characterises his personality as "deeply neurotic, depressive, agitated, introverted, fearful of change and loss of control, and self-effacing but capable of extraordinary competitiveness."[3] A representative of the landed aristocracy, he held the reactionary credo, "Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible."[4] Searle says that instead of seeing his party's victory in 1886 as a harbinger of a new and more popular Conservatism, he longed to return to the stability of the past, when his party's main function was to restrain demagogic liberalism and democratic excess.[5] He is generally ranked in the upper tier of British prime ministers.
Early life: 1830–1852[edit]
Lord Robert Cecil was born at Hatfield House, the third son of the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury and Frances Mary, née Gascoyne. He was a patrilineal descendant of Lord Burghley and the 1st Earl of Salisbury, chief ministers of Elizabeth I. The family owned vast rural estates in Hertfordshire and Dorset. This wealth increased sharply in 1821, when his father married his mother, Frances Mary Gascoyne, heiress of a wealthy merchant and Member of Parliament who had bought large estates in Essex and Lancashire.[6]: 7
Robert had a miserable childhood, with few friends, and filled his time with reading. He was bullied unmercifully at the schools he attended.[6]: 8–10 In 1840, he went to Eton College, where he did well in French, German, Classics, and Theology, but left in 1845 because of intense bullying.[7] His unhappy schooling shaped his pessimistic outlook on life and his negative views on democracy. He decided that most people were cowardly and cruel, and that the mob would run roughshod over sensitive individuals.[6]: 10
In December 1847, he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he received an honorary fourth class in Mathematics, conferred by nobleman's privilege due to ill health. Whilst at Oxford, he found the Oxford movement or "Tractarianism" to be an intoxicating force, and had an intense religious experience that shaped his life.[6]: 12, 23 He was involved in the Oxford Union, serving as its secretary and treasurer. In 1853, he was elected a prize fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
In April 1850, he joined Lincoln's Inn, but did not enjoy law.[6]: 15 His doctor advised him to travel for his health, and so, from July 1851 to May 1853, Cecil travelled through Cape Colony, Australia, including Tasmania, and New Zealand.[6]: 15–16 He disliked the Boers and wrote that free institutions and self-government could not be granted to the Cape Colony because the Boers outnumbered the British three-to-one, and "it will simply be delivering us over bound hand and foot into the power of the Dutch, who hate us as much as a conquered people can hate their conquerors".[6]: 16 He found the Native South Africans "a fine set of men – whose language bears traces of a very high former civilisation", similar to Italian. They were "an intellectual race, with great firmness and fixedness of will" but "horribly immoral" because they lacked theism.[6]: 17
At the Bendigo goldfields in Australia, he claimed that "there is not half as much crime or insubordination as there would be in an English town of the same wealth and population". Ten thousand miners were policed by four men armed with carbines and, at Mount Alexander, 30,000 people were protected by 200 policemen, with over 30,000 ounces (850,000 g) of gold mined per week. He believed that there was "generally far more civility than I should be likely to find in the good town of Hatfield" and claimed that was due to "the government was that of the Queen, not of the mob; from above, not from below. Holding from a supposed right (whether real or not, no matter)" and from "the People the source of all legitimate power,"[6]: 18 Cecil said of the Māori of New Zealand: "The natives seem when they have converted to make much better Christians than the white man". A Maori chief offered Cecil 5 acres (2 ha) near Auckland, which he declined.[6]: 19
Secretary of State for India: 1874–1878[edit]
Salisbury returned to government in 1874, serving once again as Secretary of State for India in the government of Benjamin Disraeli, and Britain's Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the 1876 Constantinople Conference. Salisbury gradually developed a good relationship with Disraeli, whom he had previously disliked and mistrusted.
During a Cabinet meeting on 7 March 1878, a discussion arose over whether to occupy Mytilene. Lord Derby recorded in his diary that "[o]f all present Salisbury by far the most eager for action: he talked of our sliding into a position of contempt: of our being humiliated etc."[13] At the Cabinet meeting the next day, Derby recorded that Lord John Manners objected to occupying the city "on the ground of right. Salisbury treated scruples of this kind with marked contempt, saying, truly enough, that if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made. He was more vehement than any one for going on. In the end the project was dropped..."[14]
Foreign Secretary: 1878–1880[edit]
In 1878, Salisbury became foreign secretary in time to help lead Britain to "peace with honour" at the Congress of Berlin. For this he was rewarded with the Order of the Garter along with Disraeli.
Leader of the Opposition: 1892–1895[edit]
In the aftermath of the general election of 1892, Balfour and Chamberlain wished to pursue a programme of social reform, which Salisbury believed would alienate "a good many people who have always been with us" and that "these social questions are destined to break up our party".[7] When the Liberals and Irish Nationalists (which were a majority in the new Parliament) successfully voted against the government, Salisbury resigned the premiership on 12 August. His private secretary at the Foreign Office wrote that Salisbury "shewed indecent joy at his release".[7]
Salisbury—in an article in November for the National Review entitled 'Constitutional revision'—said that the new government, lacking a majority in England and Scotland, had no mandate for Home Rule and argued that because there was no referendum only the House of Lords could provide the necessary consultation with the nation on policies for organic change.[7] The Lords defeated the second Home Rule Bill by 419 to 41 in September 1893, but Salisbury stopped them from opposing the Liberal Chancellor's death duties in 1894. In 1894 Salisbury also became president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,[23] presenting a notable inaugural address on 4 August of that year.[24][25] The general election of 1895 returned a large Unionist majority.[7]
Last year: 1902–1903[edit]
Due to breathing difficulties caused by his great weight, Salisbury took to sleeping in a chair at Hatfield House. He also experienced a heart condition and later blood poisoning caused by an ulcerated leg. His death in August 1903 followed a fall from that chair.[7]
Salisbury was buried at St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield, where his predecessor as prime minister, Lord Melbourne, is also interred. Salisbury is commemorated with a monumental cenotaph near the west door of Westminster Abbey.
When Salisbury died his estate was valued at £310,336,[60] (equivalent to £35,453,159 in 2021).[61]
Lord Salisbury was the third son of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, a minor Conservative politician. In 1857, he defied his father, who wanted him to marry a rich heiress to protect the family's lands. He instead married Georgina Alderson, the daughter of Sir Edward Alderson, a moderately notable judge and of lower social standing than the Cecils. The marriage proved a happy one. Robert and Georgina had eight children, all but one of whom survived infancy. He was an indulgent father and made sure his children had a much better childhood than the one through which he suffered. Cut off from his family money, Robert supported his family through journalism and was later reconciled with his father.[6]: 30–33, 75, 105–8
Salisbury had prosopagnosia, a cognitive disorder which makes it difficult to recognise familiar faces.[77]