Robert Peel

Peel was born at Chamber Hall, Bury, Lancashire, to the industrialist and parliamentarian Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, and his wife Ellen Yates. His father was one of the richest textile manufacturers of the early Industrial Revolution.[3] The family moved from Lancashire to Drayton Manor near Tamworth, Staffordshire; the manor house has since been demolished, the site occupied by Drayton Manor Theme Park.[4]

Peel received his early education from a clergyman tutor in Bury and at a clergyman's local school in Tamworth.[1] He may also have attended Bury Grammar School or Hipperholme Grammar School, though evidence for either is anecdotal rather than textual.[5] He started at Harrow School in February 1800.[6] At Harrow he was a contemporary of Lord Byron, who recalled of Peel that "we were on good terms" and that "I was always in scrapes, and he never".[7] On Harrow's Speech Day in 1804, Peel and Byron acted part of Virgil's Aeneid, Peel playing Turnus and Byron playing Latinus.[1][8]

Christ Church, Oxford, which Peel attended 1805–1808, graduating with a double first. He was later MP for the university, 1817–1829.

In 1805 Peel matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford.[9] His tutor was Charles Lloyd, later Regius Professor of Divinity,[10] on Peel's recommendation appointed Bishop of Oxford.[11] In 1808 Peel became the first Oxford student to take a double first in Classics and Mathematics.[12]

Peel was a law student at Lincoln's Inn in 1809.[13] He also held military commissions as a captain in the Manchester Regiment of Militia in 1808, and later as lieutenant in the Staffordshire Yeomanry Cavalry in 1820.[14]

Peel entered politics in 1809 at the age of 21, as MP for the Irish rotten borough of Cashel, Tipperary.[15] With a scant 24 electors on the rolls, he was elected unopposed. His sponsor for the election (besides his father) was the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, with whom Peel's political career would be entwined for the next 25 years. Peel made his maiden speech at the start of the 1810 session, when he was chosen by Prime Minister Spencer Perceval to second the reply to the king's speech.[16] His speech was a sensation, famously described by the Speaker, Charles Abbot, as "the best first speech since that of William Pitt."[17]

Peel changed constituency twice, becoming MP for Chippenham in 1812, and then MP for Oxford University in 1817.[18]

In 1810, Peel was appointed an Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies; his Secretary of State was Lord Liverpool.[1] When Lord Liverpool formed a government in 1812, Peel was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland.[1] The Peace Preservation Act of 1814 authorised the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to appoint additional magistrates in a county in a state of disturbance, who were authorised to appoint paid special constables (later called "peelers"[19]). Peel thus laid the basis for the Royal Irish Constabulary.[20]

Peel was firmly opposed to Catholic emancipation, believing that Catholics could not be admitted to Parliament as they refused to swear the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown.[21] In May 1817, Peel delivered the closing speech in opposition to Henry Grattan's Catholic emancipation bill; the bill was defeated by 221 votes to 245.[22]

Peel resigned as Chief Secretary and left Ireland in August 1818.[1]

In 1819 the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee, the Bullion Committee, charged with stabilising British finances after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and Peel was chosen as its chairman.[23] Peel's Bill planned to return British currency to the gold standard, reversing the Bank Restriction Act 1797, within four years (it was actually accomplished by 1821).[24]

The Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister 1828–1830, with Peel

Peel was considered one of the rising stars of the Tory party, first entering the cabinet in 1822 as Home Secretary.[25] As Home Secretary, he introduced a number of important reforms of British criminal law.[26] He reduced the number of crimes punishable by death, and simplified the law by repealing a large number of criminal statutes and consolidating their provisions into what are known as Peel's Acts. He reformed the gaol system, introducing payment for gaolers and education for the inmates in the Gaols Act 1823.[27]

He resigned as home secretary in 1827 after the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool became incapacitated and was replaced by George Canning.[28]

Canning favoured Catholic emancipation, while Peel had been one of its most outspoken opponents (earning the nickname "Orange Peel", with Orange the colour of the anti-Catholic Irish Unionists).[29] George Canning himself died less than four months later and, after the brief premiership of Lord Goderich, Peel returned to the post of Home Secretary under the premiership of his long-time ally the Duke of Wellington.[30] During this time he was widely perceived as the number-two in the Tory Party, after Wellington himself.[31]

The Test and Corporation Acts required many officials to be communicants in the Anglican Church and penalised both nonconformists and Catholics. They were no longer enforced but were a matter of humiliation. Peel at first opposed the repeal, but reversed himself and led the repeal on behalf of the government, after consultation with Anglican Church leaders.[32] The Sacramental Test Act 1828 passed into law in May 1828. In future religious issues he made it a point to consult with church leaders from the major denominations.[33]

The 1828 Clare by-election returned the Catholic Irish nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell. By autumn 1828, the Chief Secretary for Ireland was alarmed by the extent of civil disorder and the prospect of a rebellion[34] if O'Connell were barred from Parliament. Wellington and Peel now conceded the necessity of Catholic emancipation, Peel writing to Wellington that "though emancipation was a great danger, civil strife was a greater danger".[1] Peel drew up the Catholic Relief bill.

Peel felt compelled to stand for re-election to his seat in Oxford, as he was representing the graduates of Oxford University (many of whom were Anglican clergymen), and had previously stood on a platform of opposition to Catholic Emancipation.[35] Peel lost his seat in a by-election in February 1829, but soon found another, moving to a rotten borough, Westbury, retaining his Cabinet position.[36] He stood for Tamworth in the general election of 1830, representing Tamworth until his death.

Peel guided the Catholic relief bill through the House of Commons, Wellington through the House of Lords. With many Ultra-Tories vehemently opposed to emancipation, the bill could pass only with Whig support.[37] Wellington threatened to resign if King George IV did not give Royal assent;[38] the King finally relented, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 passing into law in April 1829. Peel's U-turn cost him the trust of many Tories:[39] according to Norman Gash, Peel had been "the idolized champion of the Protestant party; that party now regarded him as an outcast".[40][41]

This satirical 1829 cartoon by William Heath depicted the Duke of Wellington and Peel in the roles of the body-snatchers Burke and Hare suffocating Mrs Docherty for sale to Dr. Knox; representing the extinguishing by Wellington and Peel of the 141-year-old Constitution of 1688 by Catholic Emancipation.

The middle and working classes in England at that time, however, were clamouring for reform, and Catholic Emancipation was only one of the ideas in the air.[45] The Tory ministry refused to bend on other issues and were swept out of office in 1830 in favour of the Whigs.[46] The following few years were extremely turbulent, but eventually enough reforms were passed that King William IV felt confident enough to invite the Tories to form a ministry again in succession to those of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne in 1834.[47] Peel was selected as prime minister but was in Italy at the time, so Wellington acted as a caretaker for three weeks until Peel's return.[48]

The Tory Ministry was a minority government and depended on Whig goodwill for its continued existence. Parliament was dissolved in December 1834 and a general election called. Voting took place in January and February 1835, and Peel's supporters gained around 100 seats, but this was not enough to give them a majority.[49]

As his statement of policy at the general election of January 1835, Peel issued the Tamworth Manifesto.[50] This document was the basis on which the modern Conservative Party was founded. In it Peel pledged that the Conservatives would endorse modest reform.[51]

The Whigs formed a compact with Daniel O'Connell's Irish Radical members to repeatedly defeat the government on various bills.[52] Eventually, after only about 100 days in government, Peel's ministry resigned out of frustration and the Whigs under Lord Melbourne returned to power.[53] The only real achievement of Peel's first administration was a commission to review the governance of the Church of England. This ecclesiastical commission was the forerunner of the Church Commissioners.[54]

In May 1839 he was offered another chance to form a government, this time by the new monarch, Queen Victoria.[55] However, this too would have been a minority government, and Peel felt he needed a further sign of confidence from his Queen. Lord Melbourne had been Victoria's confidant since her accession in 1837, and many of the higher posts in Victoria's household were held by the wives and female relatives of Whigs;[56] there was some feeling that Victoria had allowed herself to be too closely associated with the Whig party. Peel therefore asked that some of this entourage be dismissed and replaced with their Conservative counterparts, provoking the so-called Bedchamber Crisis.[57] Victoria refused to change her household, and despite pleadings from the Duke of Wellington, relied on assurances of support from Whig leaders. Peel refused to form a government, and the Whigs returned to power.[58]

Peel did retain a hard core of supporters however, known as Peelites,[79] and at one point in 1849 was actively courted by the Whig/Radical coalition. He continued to stand on his conservative principles, however, and refused. Nevertheless, he was influential on several important issues, including the furtherance of British free trade with the repeal of the Navigation Acts.[80] Peel was a member of the committee which controlled the House of Commons Library, and on 16 April 1850 was responsible for passing the motion that controlled its scope and collection policy for the rest of the century.

Peel was thrown from his horse while riding on Constitution Hill in London on 29 June 1850. The horse stumbled on top of him, and he died three days later on 2 July at the age of 62 due to a clavicular fracture rupturing his subclavian vessels.[81]

His Peelite followers, led by Lord Aberdeen and William Gladstone, went on to fuse with the Whigs as the Liberal Party.[82]

Thomas Lawrence's portrait of his patron Julia, Lady Peel (1827), now in the Frick Collection.[83]

Peel married Julia Floyd (1795 - 1859) (daughter of General Sir John Floyd, 1st Baronet and his first wife Rebecca Darke) on 8 June 1820. They had seven children:[84]

• Julia Peel (30 April 1821 – 14 August 1893). She married George Child Villiers, 6th Earl of Jersey, on 12 July 1841. They had five children. She married her second husband, Charles Brandling, on 12 September 1865.
• Sir Robert Peel, 3rd Baronet (4 May 1822 – 9 May 1895). He married Lady Emily Hay on 17 June 1856. They had five children.
• Sir Frederick Peel (26 October 1823 – 6 June 1906). He married Elizabeth Shelley (died 30 July 1865, niece of the poet Percy Shelley through his brother John) on 12 August 1857. He was remarried to Janet Pleydell-Bouverie on 3 September 1879.
• Sir William Peel (2 November 1824 – 27 April 1858).
• John Floyd Peel (24 May 1827 – 21 April 1910). He married Annie Jenny in 1851.
• Arthur Wellesley Peel (3 August 1829 – 24 October 1912). He married Adelaide Dugdale, daughter of William Stratford Dugdale and Harriet Ella Portman, on 14 August 1862. They had seven children.
• Eliza Peel (c. 1832 – April 1883). She married Hon. Francis Stonor (son of Thomas Stonor, 3rd Baron Camoys) on 25 September 1855. They had four children.

Julia, Lady Peel, died in 1859. Some of her direct descendants now reside in South Africa, the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania, and in various parts of the United States and Canada.

Portrait of Peel

In his lifetime many critics called him a traitor to the Tory cause, or as "a Liberal wolf in sheep's clothing", because his final position reflected liberal ideas.[85]

The consensus view of scholars for much of the 20th century idealised Peel in heroic terms. Historian Boyd Hilton wrote that he was portrayed as:

The great Conservative patriot: a pragmatic gradualist, as superb in his grasp of fundamental issues as he was adroit in handling administrative detail, intelligent enough to see through abstract theories, a conciliator who put nation before party and established consensus politics.[86]

Biographer Norman Gash wrote that Peel "looked first, not to party, but to the state; not to programmes, but to national expediency."[87] Gash added that among his personal qualities were, "administrative skill, capacity for work, personal integrity, high standards, a sense of duty [and] an outstanding intellect."[88]

Gash emphasised the role of personality on Peel's political career:

Peel was endowed with great intelligence and integrity, and an immense capacity for hard work. A proud, stubborn, and quick-tempered man he had a passion for creative achievement; and the latter part of his life was dominated by his deep concern for the social condition of the country. Though his great debating and administrative talents secured him an outstanding position in Parliament, his abnormal sensitivity and coldness of manner debarred him from popularity among his political followers, except for the small circle of his intimate friends. As an administrator he was one of the greatest public servants in British history; in politics he was a principal architect of the modern conservative tradition. By insisting on changes unpalatable to many of his party, he helped to preserve the flexibility of the parliamentary system and the survival of aristocratic influence. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 won him immense prestige in the country, and his death in 1850 caused a national demonstration of sorrow unprecedented since the death of William Pitt in 1806.[89]

Peel was the first serving British Prime Minister to have his photograph taken.[90] Peel is also featured on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

• List of Acts of Parliament during the first Peel ministry
• List of Acts of Parliament during the second Peel ministry
• Peelian principles
• Benjamin Hick

• Adelman, Paul (1989). Peel and the Conservative Party: 1830–1850. London and New York: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-35557-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Clark, George Kitson (1964). Peel and the Conservative Party: A Study in Party Politics 1832–1841. 2nd ed. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, The Shoe String Press, Inc.CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Cragoe, Matthew (2013). "Sir Robert Peel and the 'Moral Authority'of the House of Commons, 1832–41". English Historical Review. 128 (530): 55–77. doi:10.1093/ehr/ces357.
• Davis, Richard W (1980). "Toryism to Tamworth: The Triumph of Reform, 1827–1835". Albion. 12 (2): 132–146. doi:10.2307/4048814. JSTOR 4048814.
• Evans, Eric J. (2006). Sir Robert Peel: Statesmanship, Power and Party (2nd ed.). Lancaster Pamphlets.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Farnsworth, Susan H. (1992). The Evolution of British Imperial Policy During the Mid-nineteenth Century: A Study of the Peelite Contribution, 1846–1874. Garland Books.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Gash, Norman (1961). Mr. Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830. New York: Longmans.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link), vol 1 of the standard scholarly biography
  • Gash, Norman (1972). Sir Robert Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-87471-132-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link); vol. 2 of the standard scholarly biography
• Gash, Norman (1953). Politics in the Age of Peel. Totowa, N.J., Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-87471-132-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Gaunt, Richard A. (2010). Sir Robert Peel: the life and legacy. London: I.B. Tauris.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Halévy, Elie (1961). Victorian years, 1841–1895. A History of the English People. 4. pp. 5–159.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hurd, Douglas (2007). Robert Peel: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) ISBN 978-0-7538-2384-2
• Newbould, Ian (1983). "Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative Party, 1832–1841: A Study in Failure?". English Historical Review. 98 (388): 529–557. doi:10.1093/ehr/XCVIII.CCCLXXXVIII.529. JSTOR 569783.
• "Peel, Robert (1788–1850)" . Dictionary of National Biography. 44. 1895.
• Prest, John (May 2009) [2004]. "Peel, Sir Robert, second baronet (1788–1850)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21764. Retrieved 17 September 2014.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Ramsay, A.A.W. (1928). Sir Robert Peel.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Read, Donald (1987). Peel and the Victorians. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd: Basil Blackwell Ltd. ISBN 978-0-631-15725-0.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Reed, A. W. (2010). Peter Dowling (ed.). Place Names of New Zealand. Rosedale, North Shore: Raupo. ISBN 9780143204107.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

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• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Robert Peel, Bt
• More about Sir Robert Peel on the Downing Street website.
• Biography of Sir Robert Peel at www.victorianweb.org
• An overview of the career of Sir Robert Peel at www.victorianweb.org
• The Peel Web For A-level History students
• Sir Robert Peel, a memorial biography by H. Morse Stephens
• Works by or about Robert Peel at Internet Archive
• Works by Robert Peel at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• "Archival material relating to Robert Peel". UK National Archives.
• Portraits of Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Bt at the National Portrait Gallery, London