59 Facts About Lord Salisbury

1.

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of 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.

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2.

Lord Salisbury was Foreign Secretary for much of his tenure, and during his last two years of office he was Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal.

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3.

Lord Salisbury avoided alignments or alliances, maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".

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4.

In 1874, under Disraeli, Lord 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.

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5.

Lord Salisbury succeeded William Ewart Gladstone as prime minister in June 1885, and held the office until January 1886.

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6.

When Gladstone came out in favour of Home Rule for Ireland, Lord Salisbury opposed him and formed an alliance with the breakaway Liberal Unionists, winning the subsequent general election.

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7.

Lord Salisbury remained as prime minister until Gladstone's Liberals formed a government with the support of the Irish nationalists at the 1892 general election.

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8.

Lord Salisbury led Britain to victory in a bitter, controversial war against the Boers, and led the Unionists to another electoral victory in 1900.

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9.

Lord Salisbury relinquished the premiership to his nephew Arthur Balfour in 1902 and died in 1903.

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10.

Lord Salisbury was the last prime minister to serve from the House of Lords.

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11.

Lord Salisbury'storians agree that Salisbury was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs, with a wide grasp of the issues.

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12.

Lord Salisbury was bullied unmercifully at the schools he attended.

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13.

Lord Salisbury decided that most people were cowardly and cruel, and that the mob would run roughshod over sensitive individuals.

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14.

Lord Salisbury was involved in the Oxford Union serving as secretary and treasurer of the society.

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15.

Lord Salisbury's doctor advised him to travel for his health, and so in July 1851 to May 1853 Cecil travelled through Cape Colony, Australia, including Tasmania, and New Zealand.

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16.

Lord Salisbury 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".

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17.

Lord Salisbury found the Native South Africans "a fine set of men – whose language bears traces of a very high former civilisation", similar to Italian.

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18.

Lord Salisbury entered the House of Commons as a Conservative on 22 August 1853, as MP for Stamford in Lincolnshire.

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19.

Lord Salisbury retained this seat until he succeeded to his father's peerages in 1868 and it was not contested during his time as its representative.

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20.

Lord Salisbury would oppose "any such tampering with our representative system as shall disturb the reciprocal powers on which the stability of our constitution rests".

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21.

Lord Salisbury wrote lead articles for the Tory daily newspaper the Standard.

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22.

The lessons to be learnt from Russell's foreign policy, Lord Salisbury believed, were that he should not listen to the opposition or the press otherwise "we are to be governed… by a set of weathercocks, delicately poised, warranted to indicate with unnerving accuracy every variation in public feeling".

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23.

Lord Salisbury attacked Disraeli by pointing out how he had campaigned against the Liberal Bill in 1866 yet the next year introduced a Bill more extensive than the one rejected.

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24.

Lord Salisbury returned to government in 1874, serving as Secretary of State for India in the government of Benjamin Disraeli, and Britain's Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the 1876 Constantinople Conference.

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25.

Lord Salisbury gradually developed a good relationship with Disraeli, whom he had previously disliked and mistrusted.

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26.

Lord 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.

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27.

In 1878, Lord Salisbury became foreign secretary in time to help lead Britain to "peace with honour" at the Congress of Berlin.

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28.

The unspoken implication being that Lord Salisbury would relinquish the party leadership if his plan was not supported.

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29.

Lord Salisbury said in The Times that "the employment of mobs as an instrument of public policy is likely to prove a sinister precedent".

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30.

Lord Salisbury further claimed that Gladstone adopted reform as a "cry" to deflect attention from his foreign and economic policies at the next election.

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31.

Lord Salisbury claimed that the House of Lords was protecting the British constitution: "I do not care whether it is an hereditary chamber or any other – to see that the representative chamber does not alter the tenure of its own power so as to give a perpetual lease of that power to the party in predominance at the moment".

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32.

Lord Salisbury claimed that the Conservatives "have no cause, for Party reasons, to dread enfranchisement coupled with a fair redistribution".

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33.

Judging by the 1880 results, Lord Salisbury asserted that the overall loss to the Conservatives of enfranchisement without redistribution would be 47 seats.

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34.

Lord Salisbury spoke throughout Scotland and claimed that the government had no mandate for reform when it had not appealed to the people.

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35.

Lord Salisbury responded by agreeing only if the Franchise Bill came second.

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36.

Lord Salisbury became prime minister of a minority administration from 1885 to 1886.

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37.

When Lord Wemyss criticised the Bill as "strangling the spirit of independence and the self-reliance of the people, and destroying the moral fibre of our race in the anaconda coils of state socialism", Salisbury responded: "Do not imagine that by merely affixing to it the reproach of Socialism you can seriously affect the progress of any great legislative movement, or destroy those high arguments which are derived from the noblest principles of philanthropy and religion".

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38.

Lord Salisbury kept the foreign office, and his diplomacy continued to display a high level of skill, avoiding the extremes of Gladstone on the left and Disraeli on the right.

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39.

Lord Salisbury ended Britain's isolation through the Mediterranean Agreements with Italy and Austria-Hungary.

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40.

Lord Salisbury was offered a dukedom by Queen Victoria in 1886 and 1892, but declined both offers, citing the prohibitive cost of the lifestyle dukes were expected to maintain and stating that he would rather have an ancient marquessate than a modern dukedom.

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41.

In 1889 Lord Salisbury set up the London County Council and then in 1890 allowed it to build houses.

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42.

Lord Salisbury's comments were criticised by the Queen and by Liberals who believed that Lord Salisbury had suggested that only white Britons could represent a British constituency.

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43.

Naoroji was elected for Finsbury in 1892 and Lord Salisbury invited him to become a Governor of the Imperial Institute, which he accepted.

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44.

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.

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45.

In 1894 Lord Salisbury became president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, presenting a notable inaugural address on 4 August of that year.

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46.

The Venezuela crisis was settled amicably and London and Washington became friendly after Lord Salisbury gave Washington what it wanted in the Alaska boundary dispute.

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47.

Lord Salisbury quickly resolved the tensions, and systematically moved toward friendlier relations with France.

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48.

Lord Salisbury'storians agree that Salisbury was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs.

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49.

Lord Salisbury had a superb grasp of the issues, and was never a "splendid isolationist" but rather, says Nancy W Ellenberger, was:.

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50.

Lord Salisbury oversaw the partition of Africa, the emergence of Germany and the United States as imperial powers, and the transfer of British attention from the Dardanelles to Suez without provoking a serious confrontation of the great powers.

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51.

Lord Salisbury is commemorated with a monumental cenotaph near the west door of Westminster Abbey.

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52.

In 1977 the Lord Salisbury Group was founded, chaired by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 6th Marquess of Lord Salisbury and named after the 3rd Marquess.

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53.

The academic quarterly The Lord Salisbury Review was named in his honour upon its founding in 1982.

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54.

Andrew Jones and Michael Bentley wrote in 1978 that "historical inattention" to Lord Salisbury "involves wilful dismissal of a Conservative tradition which recognizes that threat to humanity when ruling authorities engage in democratic flattery and the threat to liberty in a competitive rush of legislation".

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55.

Fort Lord Salisbury was named in honour of him when it was founded in September 1890.

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56.

Lord Salisbury was the third son of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, a minor Conservative politician.

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57.

Lord Salisbury instead married Georgina Alderson, the daughter of Sir Edward Alderson, a moderately notable judge and of lower social standing than the Cecils.

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58.

Lord Salisbury was an indulgent father and made sure his children had a much better childhood than the one through which he suffered.

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59.

Lord Salisbury had prosopagnosia, a cognitive disorder which makes it difficult to recognize familiar faces.

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