Overview
Bertrand Russell
(1872—1970) philosopher, journalist, and political campaigner
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Adullamites
Was the name derisively given to Robert Lowe and nearly 40 Liberal MPs who opposed Lord Russell's programme of parliamentary reform in 1866. They were dubbed by John Bright on 13 March in allusion to ...
Ecclesiastical Titles Act
1851.In 1850, Pope Pius IX, encouraged by Nicholas Wiseman, announced the restoration of a Roman catholic hierarchy in England with English territorial titles, such as archbishop of Westminster. This ...
Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby
(1799–1869).The longest serving of Conservative leaders. Heir to an ancient title (the main estates in south Lancashire around Knowsley), Stanley, after Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, was a Whig MP ...
Friends of the People
Was an association of radical Whig aristocrats and parliamentarians launched in 1792 by Lord John Russell, Charles Grey, and their friends. It advocated moderate parliamentary reform as a means of ...
Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston
(1784–1865).Prime minister. A pupil of Dugald Stewart at Edinburgh, he went on to Cambridge University. He was elected in 1807 for a pocket borough in the Isle of Wight and subsequently represented ...
Hyde Park riots
1866.Soon after the death of Palmerston, Lord Russell's government introduced a second Reform Bill, extending the franchise. Opposition by discontented Liberals led to the fall of the government in ...
Reform Acts
The transition from the unreformed system of 1830 to full democracy in the 20th cent. was effected by seven franchise measures—the Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884, 1918, 1928, 1948, and 1969—supported by a ...
Reform League
1865–9.The Reform League was established in 1865 to press for manhood suffrage and the ballot. It collaborated with the more moderate and middle‐class Reform Union and its parliamentary spokesmen ...
Robert Lowe
(1811–92).Liberal politician. An albino and a sharply sarcastic debater, Lowe cut a distinctive political figure. Of Anglican clerical family and educated at Winchester and Oxford, as a Liberal MP he ...
Sir Rowland Hill
(1795–1879).Inventor of penny postage. Hill was born in Kidderminster, son of a schoolmaster. He took over his father's school but abandoned teaching, and in 1835 became secretary to a commission to ...
1st earl of Orford, Edward Russell
(1652–1727).Russell was nephew of the 1st duke of Bedford, entered the navy in 1671, and saw much service in the second Anglo‐Dutch War. Alienated from the court by the execution of his cousin Lord ...
4th earl of Clarendon, George Villiers
(1800–70).Whig Politician. Clarendon served under such diverse leaders as Aberdeen, Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone (1853–8, 1865–6, and 1868–70). The Tory leader, Derby, twice offered him a place ...
Union of Democratic Control
Founded in September 1914 by a group of liberal intellectuals, including J. A. Hobson, Norman Angell, and Bertrand Russell, who believed that wars came about through secret diplomacy. During the war ...
W. E. Gladstone
(1809–98).Statesman and author. Gladstone was in office every decade from the 1830s to the 1890s, starting as a Tory, ending as a Liberal‐radical. Born in Liverpool on 29 December 1809, the son of ...
William Edward Forster
(1818–86).Forster was a hard‐working politician whose greatest achievement was the Education Act of 1870. The son of a quaker missionary, he began in the Yorkshire woollen trade at Bradford. In 1861 ...
