33 Facts About Lord Acton

Lord Acton was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet, and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral and prime minister Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet.

John Lord Acton's grandfather succeeded to the baronetcy and family estates in Shropshire in 1791.

John Lord Acton's grandfather was a member of a younger line of the family which had transferred itself to France and, subsequently, to Italy, but, subsequent to the extinction of the elder branch, he became the patriarch of the family.

Lord Acton's grandfather's eldest son, Richard, who was his father, married Marie Louise Pelline, the only daughter and heiress of Emmerich Joseph, 1st Duc de Dalberg, who was a naturalised French noble of ancient German lineage who had entered the French service under Napoleon and represented Louis XVIII at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

Lord Acton became the mother of John Dalberg-Acton who was born in Naples.

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Lord Acton was raised as a Roman Catholic, and was educated at Oscott College, under the future-Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, until 1848.

Lord Acton was denied entry to the University of Cambridge because he was a Catholic, and subsequently went to Munich where he studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and resided in the house of Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, the theologian and forerunner of the Old Catholic Church, with whom he became lifelong friends.

Lord Acton was a master of the principal foreign languages, and began at an early age to collect a magnificent historical library, which he intended to use to compose a "History of Liberty".

In 1859, Lord Acton settled in England, at his country house, Aldenham, in Shropshire.

Lord Acton was returned to the House of Commons that same year as member for the Irish Borough of Carlow and became a devoted admirer and adherent of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

However, Lord Acton was not an active MP, and his parliamentary career came to an end after the general election of 1865, when he headed the Liberal ballot for Bridgnorth near his Shropshire home.

Lord Acton defeated Conservative leader Henry Whitmore, who successfully petitioned for a scrutiny of the ballots, and thus retained his own seat and Lord Acton lost his new seat.

Lord Acton took a great interest in the United States, considering its federal structure the perfect guarantor of individual liberties.

Lord Acton's elevation came primarily through the intercession of Gladstone.

Gladstone was particularly concerned to elevate Lord Acton's standing as he headed out to Rome to resist the Pope's plan to have Papal Infallibility confirmed at the Vatican Council.

Lord Acton was a strong supporter of Irish Home Rule.

Meanwhile, Lord Acton became the editor of the Roman Catholic monthly paper, The Rambler, in 1859, upon John Henry Newman's retirement from the editorship.

Lord Acton continued to contribute articles to the North British Review, which, previously a Scottish Free Church organ, had been acquired by friends in sympathy with him, and which for some years promoted the interests of a high-class Liberalism in both temporal and ecclesiastical matters.

Lord Acton did a good deal of lecturing on historical subjects.

In 1870, along with his mentor Dollinger, Lord Acton opposed the moves to promulgate the doctrine of papal infallibility in the First Vatican Council, travelling to Rome to lobby against it, ultimately unsuccessfully.

Unlike Dollinger, Lord Acton did not become an Old Catholic, and continued attending Mass regularly; he received the last rites on his deathbed.

Lord Acton devoted himself to reading, study and congenial society.

In 1874, when Gladstone published his pamphlet on The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, Lord Acton wrote during November and December a series of remarkable letters to The Times, illustrating Gladstone's main theme by numerous historical examples of papal inconsistency, in a way which must have been bitter enough to the ultramontane party, but ultimately disagreeing with Gladstone's conclusion and insisting that the Church itself was better than its premises implied.

Lord Acton's letters led to another storm in the English Roman Catholic world, but once more it was considered prudent by the Holy See to leave him alone.

On 1 August 1865 Lord Acton married Countess Marie Anna Ludomilla Euphrosina von Arco auf Valley, daughter of the Bavarian Count Maximilian von Arco auf Valley, with whom he had six children:.

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Lord Acton's nephew was Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley, a German count and political activist, and assassin of socialist Bavarian minister-president Kurt Eisner in 1919.

When his cousin Maria, Duchess of Galliera died in 1888, Lord Acton inherited the dormant title of Marquess of Groppoli.

Finally, in 1895, on the death of Sir John Seeley, Lord Acton Rosebery appointed him to the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge.

Lord Acton delivered two courses of lectures on the French Revolution and on Modern History, but it was in private that the effects of his teaching were felt most.

Lord Acton's health began to fail in 1901, and on 19 June 1902, in his 69th year, he died at the spa town of Tegernsee, Bavaria, Germany, whilst staying at his wife's family home there.

Lord Acton's body was buried in a small communal graveyard by Lake Tegernsee, the grave lying today unmarked having lost its headstone in the latter half of the 20th century.

Lord Acton was succeeded in the title by his son, Richard Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, 2nd Baron Acton.

Lord Acton has left too little completed original work to rank among the great historians; his very learning seems to have stood in his way; he knew too much and his literary conscience was too acute for him to write easily, and his copiousness of information overloads his literary style.