Salisbury, Robert Gascoyne‐Cecil, 3rd marquis of

Salisbury, Robert Gascoyne‐Cecil, 3rd marquis of (1830–1903). Prime minister. Salisbury was an unlikely candidate for such a long tenure of the premiership. A younger son of an ancient Tory house, he was intellectual (with little taste for aristocratic sports) and unsociable. From 1863, at odds with his family over his non‐aristocratic marriage, he supplemented his allowance by journalism (over 600 Saturday Review articles and 33 for the Quarterly Review), so that we have more of his thinking in print than that of any other prime minister. Though he was an MP for a family borough from 1853 and in Derby's cabinet in 1866, his prickliness and rigidity made him an awkward colleague. Anti‐democratic and anti‐populist and long distrustful of Disraeli as a political mountebank, Cranborne (as he then was) resigned with two cabinet colleagues in early 1867 over the borough franchise proposals in the government's Reform Bill. Out of office he remained a trenchant critic of Disraeli and a standing threat to his leadership. In 1869 he succeeded to the marquisate and the great house at Hatfield, and succeeded Derby as chancellor of Oxford University and a foremost defender of its Anglican character. He agreed reluctantly to join the government of 1874, but was clearly a potential dissident in the Eastern Question crisis. Disraeli had, however, worked to cultivate Salisbury, and when Derby and the earl of Carnarvon resigned in the critical moment in early 1878 Salisbury threw in his lot with Disraeli and accepted the Foreign Office. When Disraeli (Beaconsfield) died in 1881, Salisbury became party leader in the Lords and co‐leader of the whole party with Northcote. Angered by Liberal land legislation for Ireland, he played a leading role in the obstruction of Liberal measures in the Lords. Helped by Churchill's insubordination in the Commons, Salisbury got the better of his rival Northcote, a more emollient figure, and in 1885 he was the premier in the Conservative caretaker government. Once Gladstone had declared for Home Rule after the election, Salisbury mounted a resolute defence of the Union and skilfully exploited Liberal divisions. By summer 1886 Salisbury was back in office,dependent on the support of the Liberal Unionists. This uncomfortable position lasted until 1892 and Salisbury had to make various policy concessions (over Irish land purchase, education, and county councils, for example) to conciliate his allies, particularly the demanding Chamberlain. This made Salisburian government look more progressive than it would otherwise have done. By 1891 Salisbury had installed his nephew Balfour, who had made his name with a policy of resolute coercion in Ireland, as leader in the Commons. For most of his time as premier Salisbury held the Foreign Office rather than the 1st lordship of the Treasury. In diplomacy he displayed a skill which kept policy on a steady track and away from the alternating extremes of Gladstone and Disraeli earlier. He also kept Britain clear of entangling alliances, though he was a successful negotiator in reconciling differences over colonial claims.

In opposition Salisbury led the Lords in its overwhelming rejection—by 419:41—of Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill in 1893. After the Liberal resignation in 1895 Salisbury brought the Liberal Unionists under Hartington into a formal coalition with the Conservatives and this Unionist government won the election and another in 1900 (the ‘khaki’ election) when the opportunity of the Boer War was seized. By now Salisbury's vigour was declining and his policies were looking dated to younger politicians. He resigned the Foreign Office in 1900 and the premiership in 1902.

Though a high aristocrat at a time when events were moving against the aristocracy, he recognized the importance of cultivating middle‐class and urban opinion, particularly after the 1885 Redistribution Act. His success owed much to Gladstone's talent for wreaking havoc upon the Liberal Party, and upon the Liberal Unionist Hartington's support from 1886 onwards.