Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Marquis of Salisbury

Prime minister of Great Britain (1885-1886; 1886-1892; 1895-1902)

• Born: February 3, 1830
• Birthplace: Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England
• Died: August 22, 1903
• Place of death: Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England

Salisbury served as prime minister of Great Britain three times and as foreign secretary four times. In guiding British domestic and foreign policies during the last quarter of the nineteenth century with a steady and firm hand, he overshadowed the influence of all his political rivals through the last years of the nineteenth century.

Early Life

The third Marquis of Salisbury was born Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil on the Cecil family’s English estate in Hertfordshire. His father was James Brownlow Gascoyne-Cecil, second Marquis of Salisbury, and his mother was Frances Mary Gascoyne, an heir to estates in Lancashire and Essex. Cecil, who was, according to his daughter Lady Gwendolen, “a nervous sensitive child in mind and body,” suffered an irreparable loss when his mother died before he was ten.

After being taught by a local clergyman, Cecil spent a miserable period at a preparatory boarding school. When Cecil was ten, he was sent to Eton, where he did quite well in his academic subjects, but he despised his fellow Etonians for their constant bullying; his time there did nothing to improve his shy and withdrawn personality. When Cecil was fifteen, his father rescued him from his misery at Eton by removing him from the school. For the next two years, Cecil spent what he later called the happiest time of his childhood being tutored at his home at Hatfield. During this period, Cecil discovered an interest in botany, which he retained for the rest of his life; he also spent hours reading in the family library.

Just before he was eighteen, in 1848, Cecil went up to Christ Church, Oxford, to study mathematics. While at Oxford, he manifested his first interest in politics and became treasurer and secretary of the Oxford Union. His tenure at Oxford lasted only two years before he suffered a physical and mental breakdown; he was granted an honorary fourth-class degree.

After leaving Oxford, Cecil suffered a further breakdown of his health; on his doctor’s orders, he was sent, in 1851, on a two-year journey to Australia and New Zealand. During his travels, he regained his health although he was quite pessimistic about his future career; he did not want to practice law, and he saw little hope for securing a seat in the House of Commons. Cecil’s pessimism soon faded when his father obtained for him the vacant seat of Stamford, Lincolnshire, the borough of Stamford being under the control of one of Cecil’s cousins. In August, 1853, Cecil was elected, unopposed, as a Conservative member of Parliament for Stamford; he remained unopposed for the next fifteen years. Cecil also competed for and was elected to a fellowship in All Souls College, Oxford, in 1853.

Salisbury’s first years in Parliament were of little inspiration, and he continued to have serious problems with his physical and mental health. At six feet, four inches, and with a thin, stooping figure, the poorly dressed Cecil was not impressive physically, but his spirits took a dramatic turn for the better with his introduction to Georgina Alderson, the daughter of a Norfolk judge. Despite his father’s objection to the marriage (on the grounds that she lacked the necessary social and economic status), Cecil married Georgina in July, 1857. The outgoing and optimistic Georgina provided a solid counterbalance to her shy and pessimistic husband.

Because he needed to support his wife and a growing family, Cecil turned during the 1850’s and 1860’s to journalism as a way to supplement his precarious finances. He contributed a number of articles to the Quarterly Review and to the Saturday Review, which was owned by his brother-in-law. Cecil, who had entered Parliament in 1853 at the age of twenty-three, did not feel comfortable with the Tory leadership of the fourteenth earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, and he became gloomy about the character of the current political system. He acquired, during this period, a reputation as an independent thinker who was, both in his articles and in his speeches before the Commons, prepared to criticize his own party’s policies and leaders.

Cecil’s opposition to his party’s leadership climaxed during the 1850’s and 1860’s with his determination to prevent any parliamentary reform of the British electoral system. He opposed any significant increase in the size of the British electorate, believing that any radical change in the electoral system, such as the enfranchisement of the working classes, would irreparably harm the British system of checks and balances. When the Conservatives led by the earl of Derby and Disraeli introduced, in early 1867, a reform bill that gave the franchise to all urban taxpayers, Cecil resigned his recently acquired seat in the cabinet.

During this period of debate over parliamentary reform, Cecil had assumed the courtesy title of Lord Cranborne and had become heir to the Salisbury title upon the death of his older brother. At his father’s death in April, 1868, Cecil inherited the Hatfield estates and became the third Marquis of Salisbury. His achievements, which make him one of Great Britain’s greatest statesmen, were to be attained while leading his party from the House of Lords.

Life’s Work

The new Lord Salisbury’s move to the House of Lords did not prevent him from criticizing the programs and policies of William Ewart Gladstone’s Liberal government of 1868-1874. Although politics occupied much of his time during this period, Salisbury also found time to chair the Great Eastern Railway and was elected in 1869 as chancellor of Oxford University. He also spent much of his time at Hatfield with his growing family.

After the stunning victory of the Conservatives in the general election in 1874, Disraeli persuaded Salisbury to return to his former post as secretary of state for India in the new Conservative cabinet. It was during the Disraeli administration of 1874-1880 that Salisbury was propelled into prominence in foreign affairs and was established in his reputation as one of Great Britain’s greatest diplomatic statesmen. After Russia invaded Turkey’s possessions in 1877, both countries signed a peace treaty that forced the Turks to place their Balkan territories under Russian control. Disagreeing with the British cabinet’s decision not to recognize the treaty, the fifteenth earl of Derby resigned as foreign secretary, and Salisbury took his place in March, 1878. Salisbury successfully negotiated the terms of treaties with both Russia and Turkey, which paved the way for the famous Congress of Berlin, held in the summer of 1878. Although Disraeli commanded most of the attention at the congress, it was Salisbury’s masterful diplomacy that succeeded in preserving the balance of power in the Balkans.

The Conservatives fell from power in the general election of spring, 1880, and Gladstone formed his second ministry (1880-1885); Salisbury was chosen to lead the Conservatives in the House of Lords when Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) died in April, 1881. Upon Gladstone’s defeat in May, 1885, over a budget issue, Salisbury reluctantly became prime minister for the first time; during his administration, the question of Irish home rule dominated much of the debate. Salisbury, who served as his own foreign secretary, devoted much of his time during his brief ministry to Ireland and international problems, including the renewed tensions in the Balkans. After suffering defeat in the November, 1885, general election, Salisbury resigned as prime minister in January, 1886.

With the defeat of Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule Bill in June, 1886, ninety-three Liberals (also known as Liberal Unionists) deserted the Liberal Party. Because of Salisbury’s ability to persuade local Conservatives to give the Liberal Unionists free races in their constituencies, Salisbury and the Unionists triumphed in July, 1886, in the general election. He formed his second ministry, which would last until 1892.

The first months of Salisbury’s second administration were dominated by the mercurial personality of Lord Randolph Churchill, who served as Leader of the Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill, who was constantly at odds with his fellow cabinet members, was allowed to resign over a budget issue in December, 1886; Salisbury, not Churchill, would run the 1886-1892 Conservative administration. The major domestic achievement of this administration was the passage of the Local Government Act of 1888, which created elected county councils in England and Wales. Other important pieces of domestic legislation included acts for mine regulation, working-class housing, and free education. Salisbury, who had taken over the Foreign Office in January, 1887, devoted much of his time and energy to international and colonial affairs. He made good use of his diplomatic skills in fending off the encroachments of France, Germany, and Portugal during the European partition of Africa. Although by no means a crusading imperialist, Salisbury was determined to safeguard British interests in Africa.

With the Liberal victory at the polls in 1892, Salisbury lost control of the government for three years. Nevertheless, although Gladstone managed to pass an Irish Home Rule Bill through the Commons in 1893, Salisbury and others decisively defeated the bill in the upper chamber. Salisbury and the Conservatives returned to power with a convincing victory in the general election of summer, 1895; Salisbury would now serve as prime minister uninterrupted until his retirement in 1902.

Although heavily involved with foreign policy during his last administration, Salisbury did not ignore domestic and social issues. He pushed through acts concerned with workmen’s compensation, vaccination, food and drugs, working-class housing, and Irish land purchase. In his foreign policy, all Salisbury’s skillful diplomacy was needed to avert a war between Great Britain and France over the French intrusion into the Upper Nile. Salisbury was also involved in the successful negotiation between the United States and Great Britain over a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. His diplomatic skills did not, however, prevent the outbreak of the South African (Boer) War from 1899 through 1902 between Great Britain and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Salisbury had supported the policy of achieving British control of the Transvaal, but he only reluctantly supported Great Britain’s entry into the South African War.

Soon after the Conservative government was returned to power in the fall, 1900, election, the tired, seventy-year-old Salisbury gave up the Foreign Office. Now in declining health, he waited until the South African War had been settled and a peace treaty signed before he handed his resignation to Edward VII on July 11, 1902. A little more than a year later, on August 22, 1903, Salisbury died at Hatfield.

Significance

Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, prime minister for nearly fourteen years, was one of Great Britain’s most influential statesmen of the late Victorian period. Although Disraeli and Gladstone dominated mid-Victorian politics, Salisbury overshadowed all of his rivals in foreign and domestic affairs. He was the last British statesman to head the government from the House of Lords and not from the House of Commons.

Salisbury is best known as one of Great Britain’s great foreign policy statesmen. Although he was no jingoistic imperialist, the British Empire grew during his tenure as foreign secretary and prime minister. He did not actively promote the expansion of the British Empire but instead ensured that Great Britain’s interests were protected abroad. Salisbury, who despised secret diplomacy, believed that foreign affairs should be conducted in the open and opposed interference in the internal affairs of other nations. He conducted his foreign policy in a deliberate and methodical manner.

Although no diehard resister of change, Salisbury attempted in his domestic policies to reconcile individual liberties and freedoms with social and political stability. A firm believer in self-help in certain domestic areas, such as working-class housing reform, he was nevertheless willing to use the power of the state to address pressing problems that he believed threatened the entire fabric of British society.

Salisbury was in many ways the architect of the modern Conservative British Party; he made effective use of Gladstone’s Irish home rule program to provide a secure base in the Conservative Party for moderate Liberals who had fled their own party over the home rule issue. Unlike many of his political contemporaries, he devoted considerable time and energy to managing party affairs. With his numerous speeches to Conservative associations, he was one of the first British politicians to make effective use of the stump speech to articulate his political opinions, and he also made effective use of Victorian periodicals to publicize his conservative views.

Salisbury was not the charismatic type of politician who needed society’s adulation; he preferred to spend his time with his family at Hatfield or with his scientific experiments in his basement laboratory. Ironically, the shy and reserved Salisbury, who wanted to avoid publicity, served in the limelight for much of the last quarter of the nineteenth century as one of Great Britain’s most famous and influential statesmen.

Bibliography

Bentley, Michael. Lord Salisbury’s World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. An examination of the political thought and worldview of Salisbury and other late-Victorian conservatives, providing a context in which to better understand Salisbury’s political career.

Cecil, Lady Gwendolen. Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. 4 vols. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921-1932. Any study of Salisbury must begin with this definitive biography by his daughter; however, Lady Gwendolen’s massive work follows her father only to the end of his second ministry in 1892.

Grenville, J. A. S. Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy: The Close of the Nineteenth Century. London: Athlone Press, 1964. Salisbury’s foreign policy has received much attention from scholars, and this study is a perceptive analysis of Salisbury’s foreign policy between 1895 and 1902.

Kennedy, A. L. Salisbury, 1830-1903: Portrait of a Statesman. London: John Murray, 1953. Kennedy offers a very readable portrait of Salisbury. Except for his coverage of the 1892-1903 period, however, he adds little that cannot be found in the more complete study of Salisbury by his daughter.

Marsh, Peter. The Discipline of Popular Government: Lord Salisbury’s Domestic Statecraft, 1881-1902. Hassocks, England: Harvester Press, 1978. Although the majority of works on Salisbury have focused on Salisbury and his foreign policy, this well-researched and well-written book is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature concerned with the domestic and party leader.

Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael. The Political Thought of Lord Salisbury, 1854-1868. London: Constable, 1967. Through a detailed analysis of Salisbury’s articles for the Quarterly Review and the Saturday Review, the author effectively examines the fundamental assumptions of Salisbury’s political philosophy.

Roberts, Andrew. Salisbury: Victorian Titan. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999. Comprehensive, exhaustively researched biography, exploring Salisbury’s private life, careers as a journalist and politician, and character and intellect.

Salisbury, Third Marquess of. Lord Salisbury on Politics: A Selection from His Articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860-1883. Edited by Paul Smith. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Salisbury wrote thirty-three articles for the Tory Quarterly Review between 1860 and 1883; Smith presents a valuable analysis of Salisbury’s ideas on politics in his introduction and skillful editing of seven of these articles.

Steele, David. Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography. London: LCL Press, 1999. A reappraisal of Salisbury’s political career, focusing on his both his domestic and foreign policies.

Taylor, Robert. Lord Salisbury. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975. Taylor has written the best single-volume work on Salisbury; while others have concentrated on Salisbury’s foreign policy, Taylor devotes most of his study to his subject’s domestic record. The book also contains an excellent bibliography of the major primary and secondary sources.