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Portrait of William Gladstone

Prime Ministers · 19th century

William Gladstone

1809–1898 · British

Liberal (earlier Tory and Peelite)

In office: 1868–1874; 1880–1885; 1886; 1892–1894

William Ewart Gladstone, born in Liverpool, began as a High Tory, became a Peelite, and led the Liberal Party as Prime Minister four times, more than anyone else. His first ministry disestablished the Church of Ireland and introduced state elementary education, the secret ballot and open competition in the civil service; he was also Chancellor of the Exchequer four times. His later career was consumed by the struggle for Irish Home Rule, which split the Liberals in 1886. When he resigned in 1894 aged 84 he was the oldest person ever to be Prime Minister.

How to spot them

  • ▸The 'Grand Old Man' (GOM); four times PM
  • ▸'My mission is to pacify Ireland'; Irish Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893
  • ▸Midlothian campaign, 1879–1880; The Bulgarian Horrors pamphlet, 1876
  • ▸Hawarden Castle, tree-felling, and the Gladstone bag
  • ▸Oldest PM (84 on leaving office in 1894)

In office

'My mission is to pacify Ireland' (1868)

Said on hearing he was to become Prime Minister

Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland (1869)

Irish Church Act

Ballot Act introducing the secret ballot (1872)

Ended open voting at parliamentary elections

The Midlothian campaign (1879–1880)

Pioneering mass-audience election speeches attacking 'Beaconsfieldism'

The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (1876)

Best-selling pamphlet on Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria

First Irish Home Rule Bill (1886)

Defeated in the Commons, splitting the Liberals as the Liberal Unionists broke away

Death of General Gordon at Khartoum (1885)

Relief arrived too late; the 'GOM' became the 'MOG' (Murderer of Gordon)

Elementary Education Act (1870)

W. E. Forster's act setting up school boards

Key ideas

  • Gladstonian Liberalism: free trade, low taxes, balanced budgets and 'retrenchment'
  • Moral force in foreign policy, as in the Bulgarian Horrors campaign
  • Home Rule for Ireland as a matter of justice

Quick-fire facts

  • •Only person to be Prime Minister four times
  • •Chancellor of the Exchequer four times
  • •Macaulay called him 'the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories' (1839)
  • •Queen Victoria complained that he addressed her as if she were a public meeting
  • •His hobby was felling trees on his estate at Hawarden in Flintshire
  • •Founded St Deiniol's Library at Hawarden, now Gladstone's Library
  • •The Gladstone bag, a hinged travelling bag, is named after him
  • •Wrote extensively on Homer, including Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858)
  • •Resigned in 1894 over naval spending; buried in Westminster Abbey in 1898

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources