George Canning held various senior cabinet positions under numerous prime ministers, including two important terms as Foreign Secretary, finally becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for the last 119 days of his life, from April to August 1827.
70 Facts About George Canning
2.
The son of an actress and a failed businessman and lawyer, Canning was supported financially by his uncle, Stratford Canning, which allowed him to attend Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
3.
George Canning was Paymaster of the Forces and Treasurer of the Navy under William Pitt the Younger.
4.
George Canning was Foreign Secretary under the Duke of Portland.
5.
George Canning was the dominant figure in the cabinet and directed the Battle of Copenhagen, the seizure of the Danish fleet in 1807 to assure Britain's naval supremacy over Napoleon.
6.
George Canning rejected overtures to serve as Foreign Secretary again because of Castlereagh's presence in Perceval's Cabinet and he remained out of high office until after Perceval was assassinated in 1812.
7.
George Canning served under the new Prime Minister the Earl of Liverpool as British Ambassador to Portugal, President of the Board of Control and Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons.
8.
King George IV disliked Canning and there were efforts to frustrate his foreign policies.
9.
George Canning's policies ensured a major trading advantage for British merchants and supported the American Monroe Doctrine.
10.
When Lord Liverpool resigned in April 1827, George Canning was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister, ahead of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel.
11.
George Canning's health collapsed, and he died of pneumonia at Chiswick House on 8 August 1827, whilst still in office.
12.
George Canning was born into an Anglo-Irish family at his parents' home in Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, London.
13.
George Canning's father, George Canning of Garvagh, County Londonderry, in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, was a gentleman of limited means, a failed wine merchant and lawyer, who renounced his right to inherit the family estate in exchange for payment of his substantial debts.
14.
Indeed, when in 1827 it looked as if George Canning would become Prime Minister, Lord Grey remarked that "the son of an actress is, ipso facto, disqualified from becoming Prime Minister".
15.
George Canning grew up with his cousins at the home of his uncle, who provided him with an income and an education.
16.
George Canning came out top of the school at Eton and left at the age of seventeen.
17.
George Canning struck up friendships with the future Lord Liverpool as well as with Granville Leveson-Gower and John Hookham Frere.
18.
George Canning began practising law after receiving his BA from Oxford in the summer of 1791, but he wished to enter politics.
19.
Stratford George Canning was a Whig and would introduce his nephew in the 1780s to prominent Whigs such as Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
20.
In 1793, thanks to the help of Pitt, George Canning became a member of parliament for Newtown on the Isle of Wight, a rotten borough.
21.
George Canning was elected to represent several constituencies during his parliamentary career.
22.
George Canning rose quickly in British politics as an effective orator and writer.
23.
George Canning's skills saw him gain leverage within the Pittite faction that allowed him influence over its policies along with repeated promotions in the Cabinet.
24.
Over time, George Canning became a prominent public speaker as well, and was one of the first politicians to campaign heavily in the country.
25.
Conversely though, George Canning had a reputation as a divisive man who alienated many.
26.
George Canning was a dominant personality and often risked losing political allies for personal reasons.
27.
George Canning once reduced Lord Liverpool to tears with a long satirical poem mocking Liverpool's attachment to his time as a colonel in the militia.
28.
In 1799 George Canning became a Commissioner of the Board of Control for India.
29.
George Canning was appointed Paymaster of the Forces in 1800.
30.
George Canning did not vote against it due to his personal devotion to Pitt.
31.
George Canning instead wanted it to have a military post and that it should be settled with ex-soldiers, free blacks and creoles, with the Native American population protected and helped.
32.
George Canning asserted that the island should be used to test the theory that better methods of cultivation in land would lessen the need for slaves.
33.
At a dinner to celebrate Pitt's birthday in 1802, George Canning wrote the song "The Pilot that Weathered the Storm", performed by a tenor from Drury Lane, Charles Dignum:.
34.
One observer thought that George Canning made incomparably the best speech and that his defence of Pitt's administration "one of the best things, either argumentatively as to matter, or critically and to manner and style" that he could ever remember.
35.
George Canning replied by criticising the Addington government's foreign policy and claimed that the House should recognise the greatness of the country and Pitt, who ought to be its leader.
36.
George Canning approved of the declaration of war against France on 18 May 1803.
37.
George Canning was angered by Pitt's desire not to proactively work to turn out the ministry but support the ministry when it adopted sound policies.
38.
George Canning returned to office in 1804 with Pitt, becoming Treasurer of the Navy.
39.
George Canning offered Canning the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland but he refused on the grounds that this would look like he was being got out of the way.
40.
George Canning left office with the death of Pitt; he was not offered a place in Lord Grenville's administration.
41.
George Canning was appointed Foreign Secretary in the new government of the Duke of Portland in 1807.
42.
George Canning was worried that Denmark might, under French pressure, become hostile to Britain.
43.
George Canning instructed Jackson that his overriding aim was to secure the possession of the Danish navy by offering the Danes a treaty of alliance and mutual defence whereby they would be given back their fleet at the end of the war.
44.
George Canning wrote to Gower on 2 October 1807: "We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear".
45.
On 3 February 1808, the opposition leader George Canning Ponsonby requested the publication of all information on the strength and battle-worthiness of the Danish fleet sent by the British envoy at Copenhagen.
46.
George Canning replied with a speech nearly three hours long, described by Lord Palmerston as "so powerful that it gave a decisive turn to the debate".
47.
In November 1807, George Canning oversaw the Portuguese royal family's flight from Portugal to Brazil.
48.
In 1809 George Canning entered into a series of disputes within the government that were to become famous.
49.
George Canning argued with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Castlereagh, over the deployment of troops that Canning had promised would be sent to Portugal but which Castlereagh sent to the Netherlands.
50.
Portland was in deteriorating health and gave no lead, until George Canning threatened resignation unless Castlereagh was removed and replaced by Lord Wellesley.
51.
George Canning accepted the challenge and it was fought on 21 September 1809 on Putney Heath.
52.
George Canning, who had never before fired a pistol, widely missed his mark.
53.
The King appointed Spencer Perceval instead, and George Canning left office once more.
54.
George Canning took consolation in the fact that Castlereagh stood down.
55.
George Canning refused, as he wished to be Leader of the House of Commons and was reluctant to serve in any government with Castlereagh.
56.
In 1814 George Canning became the British Ambassador to Portugal, recently liberated from the French by Wellington's forces.
57.
George Canning received several further offers of office from Liverpool.
58.
On 16 March 1821 George Canning spoke in favour of William Plunket's Catholic Emancipation Bill.
59.
George Canning gave support to the growing campaign for the abolition of slavery.
60.
George Canning prevented the United States from opening trade with the British West Indies.
61.
George Canning helped guarantee the independence of Brazil and the Spanish colonies, thereby acting in support of the Monroe Doctrine and aiding British merchants to open new markets across South and Central America.
62.
George Canning was the first British Foreign Secretary to devote a large proportion of his time and energies to the affairs of Latin America and to foresee the important political and economic role the Latin American states would one day play in the world.
63.
Consequently George Canning found it difficult to form a government, and chose to invite a number of Whigs to join his Cabinet, including Lord Lansdowne.
64.
The government agreed not to discuss the difficult question of parliamentary reform, which George Canning opposed but the Whigs supported.
65.
George Canning died from tuberculosis later that year, on 8 August 1827, in the room where Charles James Fox had died 21 years earlier.
66.
George Canning has come to be regarded as a "lost leader", with much speculation about what his legacy could have been had he lived.
67.
George Canning wrote very fast, but not fast enough for his mind, composing much quicker than he could commit his ideas to paper.
68.
George Canning was the arch-enemy of the Concert of Europe system set up by the conservative powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
69.
George Canning realized it was not enough for Britain to boycott conferences and congresses; it was essential to persuade the Powers that their interests could not be advanced by a system of intervention based upon principles of legitimacy, anti-nationalism and hostility to revolution.
70.
George Canning married Joan Scott on 8 July 1800, with John Hookham Frere and William Pitt the Younger as witnesses.