William Ewart Gladstone

(1809-1898)

BIRTH

December 29, 1809

PLACE

Liverpool, England

NAME

William Ewart Gladstone

DEATH

May 19, 1898

PLACE

Hawarden, Wales

FAMILY

FATHER

John Gladstone

(1764–1851)

MOTHER

Anne Mackenzie Robertson

(1772–1835)

WIFE

Catherine Gladstone

(1812-1900)

HOMES

NICKNAMES

Grand Old Man; Murderer of Gordon; the People’s William

POLITICAL VIEWS

CHURCH DISESTABLISHMENT ADVOCATE, ELECTORAL REFORM ADVOCATE, FREE TRADE ADVOCATE, IRISH HOME RULE ADVOCATE, SECRET BALLOT ADVOCATE, TARIFF REDUCTION ADVOCATE

BRITISH TORY PARTY MEMBER, LIBERAL, PEELITE

RELIGIOUS VIEWS

CHRISTIAN

ANGLICAN

MEMBERSHIPS

ST DEINIOL’S LIBRARY FOUNDER

AWARDS

William Gladstone was a British Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone served four times as prime minister between 1868 and 1894 and championed free trade, electoral reform, and Irish Home Rule. He married Catherine Glynne in 1839 and lived at her family's estate of Hawarden in Wales. As chancellor of the exchequer in the 1850s and 1860s, he cut tariffs and reduced government spending. Joining the new Liberal Party, he became prime minister in 1868.

POLITICIANSTATESMAN

EARLY LIFE

William Ewart Gladstone was born on December 29, 1809, in Liverpool, the fourth son of John Gladstone, a wealthy merchant and plantation owner of Scottish descent, and Anne MacKenzie Robertson. His father's fortune included sugar plantations in the West Indies worked by enslaved people. William was educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a double first in classics and mathematics in 1831 and was known as a brilliant debater. He considered entering the Church of England but instead turned to politics. In 1832 he was elected to Parliament as a Tory for Newark.

William Gladstone entered Parliament in 1832 as a Conservative and served under Robert Peel, including as president of the Board of Trade. His support for freer trade and Peel's repeal of the Corn Laws gradually moved him away from his original political alignment. As chancellor of the exchequer during the 1850s and 1860s, he made budgets a means of public persuasion, reducing tariffs and emphasizing economy in government. His growing identification with liberalism culminated in leadership of the Liberal Party. His early defence of slaveholding interests was part of a political development often obscured by his later reputation as a reformer.

Prime minister from 1868, Gladstone pursued a wide programme of institutional change. His first ministry disestablished the Church of Ireland, reformed army administration, introduced the secret ballot and established a national framework for elementary education. The first Irish Land Act attempted to address tenant grievances but did not end conflict over land and political authority. After defeat in 1874, his campaign against Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria and his Midlothian speeches helped rebuild popular support.

Returning to office in 1880, he extended voting rights through the 1884 Reform Act and supported the redistribution of parliamentary seats. Ireland remained a central difficulty: land reform accompanied coercive measures against agitation. His criticism of imperial aggression coexisted with Britain's military intervention in Egypt in 1882. The death of General Gordon at Khartoum in 1885 damaged his government and exposed the tensions between moral rhetoric, strategic commitments and administrative decisions. His second ministry ended that year.

Gladstone's commitment to Irish Home Rule reshaped the final phase of his career. A third ministry in 1886 introduced a bill for an Irish legislature, but Liberal opponents broke with him and the proposal failed. He again became prime minister in 1892 and secured Commons passage of a second bill in 1893, only for the Lords to reject it. He resigned in 1894 after disagreements including naval expenditure, ending an exceptionally long parliamentary career. He died in 1898. His influence lay in both major reforms and a style of leadership that treated public finance and political argument as moral responsibilities. The unresolved Irish question and contradictions of imperial policy remain essential to any assessment of those achievements.

CAREER

DEATH

One Sunday, returning from the altar rail, the old, partially blind man stumbled at the chancel step. Gladstone riposted "It was enough to make Peel and Cobden turn in their graves". On the advice of his doctor Samuel Habershon in the aftermath of an attack of facial neuralgia, Gladstone stayed at Cannes from the end of November 1897 to mid-February 1898. He gave an interview for The Daily Telegraph. Gladstone then travelled to Bournemouth, where a swelling on his palate was diagnosed as cancer by the leading cancer surgeon Sir Thomas Smith on 18 March. On 22 March, Gladstone retired to Hawarden Castle. Despite being in pain he received visitors and quoted hymns, especially Cardinal Newman's "Praise to the Holiest in the Height". I served her perhaps mistakenly, but to the best of my ability. He left the house for the last time on 9 April. After 18 April he did not come down to the ground floor but still came out of bed to lie on the sofa. The Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane George Wilkinson recorded when he ministered to him along with Stephen Gladstone: Gladstone died on 19 May 1898 at Hawarden Castle, aged 88. He had been cared for by his daughter Helen who had resigned from her job to care for her father and mother. The cause of death is officially recorded as "Syncope, Senility". "Syncope" meant failure of the heart and "senility" in the 19th century was an infirmity of advanced old age, rather than a loss of mental faculties.

Westminster Abbey

20 Dean's Yard, City of Westminster, SW1P 3PA, United Kingdom

GRAVE