Lord Salisbury

“ I was brought up to regard Lord Salisbury as a monster wherewith to frighten naughty children; my father, if he had been required to expose the Antichrist, would have pointed his finger unhesitatingly at Lord Beacons field. ”

“ The life of a Prime Minister’s family is certainly no sinecure. Lady Salisbury and her daughter have constantly to go off to found or open charities of every description. Lord Salisbury is occupied with his secretaries to the very last moment before breakfast and luncheon, into which he walks stooping, with hands folded behind him, and a deeply meditative countenance, and by his side the great boar-hound called ‘Pharaoh’—‘because he will not let the people go;’ but when once seated as a host, he wakes up into the most interesting and animated conversation. ”

“ Enter Salisbury.
Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought today.
SALISBURY.
By th’ mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard.
God knows how long it is I have to live,
And it hath pleased him that three times today
You have defended me from imminent death.
Well, lords, we have not got that which we have;
’Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,
Being opposites of such repairing nature.
YORK.
I know our safety is to follow them;
For, as I hear, the King is fled to London
To call a present court of parliament.
Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth.
What says Lord Warwick? ”

“ The great question, of course, was how Lord Salisbury would act. He was not, on some points, a quite typical Conservative, though his main object, like that later of Mr. Balfour, was to avoid change as much as possible. He had been heartily with Lord Randolph in Opposition. He had approved the Churchillian programme. He was not insensible to the fact that many of the younger elements in the Conservative Party were sympathetic to it. But temperamentally Lord Salisbury was averse to the whole scheme of Tory Democracy, except perhaps as a piece of protective make-believe. ”

“ On my expressing innocent surprise, she said, "I have been told that Lord Salisbury goes about London in a brougham;" and her tone could not have expressed a more lively horror if the vehicle had been a coster's barrow. People of a less remote date than the Duchess's had become inured to barouches for ladies and broughams for men, but a landau was contemned under the derogatory nickname of a "demi-fortune," and the spectacle of a great man scaling the dizzy heights of the 'bus or plunging into the depths of the Twopenny Tube would have given rise to lively comment. ”

“ When some proposal (say Local Veto) was extolled as a boon to the working-classes, Lord Salisbury again saw in his mind’s eye a quite ordinary bricklayer or carpenter in a village tavern, and in the strength of that vision declined to believe that England would rise against him as one man if the Lords threw out Local Veto on his suggestion. Proceeding on these lines, he developed an infallible pose for political imposture and pretence, and a massive disregard of merely noisy agitation. No man ever paid less attention to the transient manifestations of what is called public opinion. ”

“ It was à propos of insomnia that Lord Salisbury made his finest retort in the House of Lords. A new Liberal peer, to whom the leader was particularly acid, because, having been a whip in the House of Commons, he was rather conscious of his importance, was, in spite of the fact that his income arose chiefly from a brewery, advocating Local Option, because he said that the number of public-houses was a temptation to drink. ”

“ Yet he never attacked Disraeli personally, as Disraeli often attacked him. There was another of his opponents of whom he entertained an especially bad opinion, but no one could have told from his speeches what that opinion was. For Lord Salisbury he seemed to have no dislike at all, though Lord Salisbury had more than once insulted him. On one occasion (in 1890) he remarked to a colleague who had said something about the prime minister’s offensive language: “I have never felt angry at what Salisbury has said about me. ”

“ Lord Salisbury illustrated the attitude of both the Sovereign and his Ministers when speaking at the Albert Hall, London, on May 7th, during the pending negotiations: "I only wish to guard against misapprehension which I think I have seen, to the effect that the willingness we have shown to listen to all that may be said to [Pg 363] us is a proof that we have retreated or receded from our former position and are willing to recognize that the rights we claimed are no longer valid. ”

“ Lord Salisbury himself was a decidedly reluctant partner in these activities. He hated indiscriminate sociabilities, partly because his eyesight was bad and he had a difficulty in remembering faces. “Why should I spend my evening being trampled on by the Conservative party,” he was heard to complain audibly one night while standing at the head of the stairs receiving his guests. Both were a great deal happier in their house-parties at Hatfield, where they could receive their personal friends. ”

“ At a suggestion from the London foreign office, a conference of the great Powers met at Constantinople in the middle of December. Lord Salisbury went as the representative [pg 560] of England. To a correspondent Mr. Gladstone spoke of this as an excellent selection:—
I think it right at once to give you my opinion of Lord Salisbury, whom I know pretty well in private. He has little foreign or eastern knowledge, and little craft; he is rough of tongue in public debate, but a great gentleman in private society; he is very remarkably clever, of unsure judgment, but is above anything mean ”

“ Lord Salisbury married Elizabeth, daughter of William Brooke, fifth baron Cobham, and sister of the two wretched men, Henry, lord Cobham, and George Brooke, who were implicated with Markham, Watson, and Sir Walter Raleigh in the ‘Bye plot.’ By this lady he had two children: Frances, a daughter, who on 25 June 1610 married Henry Clifford, only son of the fourth earl of Cumberland, and William, his successor as second earl of Salisbury, who, on 1 Dec. 1608, married Lady Catherine Howard, youngest daughter of Thomas, earl Suffolk, and sister of the infamous Countess of Essex. ”

“ It was during their few months' absence from England that the change of Government had taken place, and Lord Salisbury's brief-lived Administration of 1886 had yielded place to a Liberal Government. Such are the vicissitudes of official life. Had Lord Salisbury been in office, Sir Richard would probably have got Morocco. It was perhaps all for the best that he did not get the post, although it was a sore disappointment to them at the time. Even Lady Burton came to take this view. ”

“ There was an awful pause when he rose, silently and so spectre-like, from his seat in the dim land of the back benches, and passed to the seat immediately behind the Marquis of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury made a very vivid and amusing speech in the course of the evening, in defence of Lord Clanricarde and in an attack on Mr. Justice Mathew; but observers thought they saw a look of palpable discomfort pass across his face at the approach of the Marquis of Clanricarde. The Lord of Woodford handed to Lord Salisbury a little bundle of papers ”

“ The death of the earl of Salisbury is, as has just been noticed, stated in the Cottonian MS. to have taken place in the preceding year. “This yere [Ao. vij. Hen. VI.] about Midsommer, the Cardenal seilid over the see with a feire compeigny wagid for to have, and werred upon the Lollards in Prage: but a litel before the departyng of the Cardenal out of England, therle of Suffolk, the lord Talbot, the lord Scalis, and many other lordes, knyghts, and squyers, were taken and slayne at the sege of Orliaunce, and the sege broken.” ”

“ The immediate reason was doubtless to be found in the main object for which the Assembly came together. The main work of the earlier Gemót of Salisbury was that all men in the realm, of whatever lord they held, should become the men of the King. Comparison with the Conqueror’s Gemót at Salisbury. William the Great therefore summoned the men of other lords, who had not up to that moment been his own men, who owed obedience to him as head of the kingdom, but who was not bound to him by any more personal tie. ”

“ Early in 1885, when his elder son came of age, the prince discussed the matter with the queen with the knowledge of the liberal ministry. There was no unwillingness on any side to treat his wishes considerately, but neither the queen nor her ministers showed undue haste in coming to close quarters with the delicate issue. Lord Salisbury was now prime minister, but the conservative government was as reluctant as any liberal government to lay a large fresh burden on the revenues of the state in the interests of the royal family. ”

“ It is not necessary to dwell at any length upon the part taken by Lord Salisbury between 1869 and 1873 in respect of the other great political measures of Gladstone’s Government—the Disraeli Cabinet of 1874.Irish Land Act, the Act Abolishing Purchase in the Army, Forster’s Education Act, &c. Nor does his attitude towards the Franco-German War of 1870–71 call for any remark; a British leader of Opposition is bound, even more than a minister, to preserve a discreet silence on such occasions. ”

“ Knowing nothing of the ground in front, he forces a leap and comes down in the ditch, and his friends with him.
Lord Salisbury is indispensable, and as nothing will cure him of his faults the only plan is to keep him out of the path of temptation. The way to do this, we are told, is to fill the front bench in the House [Pg 146] of Commons with the right sort of men. Thus his qualifications for the leadership depend upon the choice which may be made of a leader for the Lower House. Everything points to that as the one crucial business. ”

“ Richard Neville Earl of Salisbury was the son of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland (by Joan, his second wife, daughter of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster, and widow of Sir Robert Ferrers of Oversley) , and was created Earl of Salisbury after the death of Thomas de Montacute Earl of Salisbury, his wife’s father, in the fifteenth year of King Henry VI., and made Lord Chancellor in the 32nd year of his reign. ”

“ In the extension and improvement of that material part of the spiritual training of the people, the holy rite of confirmation, the energy and devotion of the late Bishop were most conspicuous. Previously to the episcopate of Bishop Denison, Salisbury had been almost the only place to which the inhabitants of all South Wilts had been compelled to resort for confirmation; and those are yet living who remember the shocking and immoral results of conveying large numbers of both sexes considerable distances, who were often compelled to seek, not only refreshment, but a night's lodging on the road. ”

“ Everybody then remembered what his seventeen years' episcopate had done for the diocese of Salisbury. Many were able to justify and increase their estimation of the services which he had rendered to the diocese by comparison with results of preceding episcopates. Then it was that men looked back on the past, and observed how silently and imperceptibly ecclesiastical institutions and an ecclesiastical system had grown up amongst and around them—had covered the surface and penetrated into the heart of the diocese. ”

“ In this Lord Salisbury was declaring war against what seemed to be the danger should Mr Chamberlain’s “unauthorized programme” succeed; while the comparative slightness of his references to Ireland showed that he had no more suspicion than anybody else of the event which was about to change the whole face of British politics, to break up the Liberal party and to change the most formidable of the advanced Radicals into an ally and a colleague. The general election took place, and there were returned to parliament 335 Liberals, 249 Conservatives and 86 Home Rulers ”

“ Lord Salisbury may have been quite right or quite wrong in India, but the circumstances of the two cases are entirely different, and each must be judged upon its own merits. Moreover, since Sir Theophilus Shepstone had been a Companion of the Order of St. ”

“ At this moment the Earl of Salisbury made an effort to save his comrades from the destruction on which they were about to rush.
'My lord,' said he, addressing the Count of Artois, 'I implore you to listen to the wholesome counsel of the grand masters. They have been long in this country, and learned by experience the craft as well as the strength of our foes. We, being strangers, [130] are ignorant of the perils ”

“ This was a court intrigue to get his money, but an urgent appeal to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and the earl of Salisbury, prime minister, appears to have put an end to trouble in the matter. He died on the 12th of December, 1611, at the age of seventy-nine, leaving immense wealth, and on the 12th of December, 1614, his body was brought on the shoulders of his pensioners to Charter-House Chapel, and interred in a vault ready for it there, beneath the huge monument erected to his memory.
"The death-day of the founder is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. ”

“ Original Letters on the Reformation, second series, p. 624. ↑ Lady Exeter was afterwards pardoned. Lady Salisbury's offences, whatever they were, seem to have been known to the world, even before Lord Southampton's visit of inspection to Warblington. The magistrates of Stockton in Sussex sent up an account of examinations taken on the 13th of September, 1538, in which a woman is charged with having said, 'If so be that my Lady of Salisbury had been a young woman as she was an old woman, the King's Grace and his council had burnt her.'—MS. State Paper Office, second series, vol. xxxix. ”