Thomas Babington 1st Baron Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron 1800-1859, English historian and author, b. Leicestershire, educated at Cambridge. After the success of his essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review (Aug., 1825), he contributed regularly to that journal. He was called to the bar in 1826 and, elected to Parliament in 1830, distinguished himself as a Whig orator. In India, 1834-38, as a member of the supreme council of the East India Company he reformed the Indian educational system and composed a legal code for the colony. On his return to England, Macaulay devoted himself to writing history, but returned to public office as secretary of war (1839-41), paymaster of the forces (1846-47), and member of Parliament (1839-47, 1852-56). In 1857 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. Macaulay's greatest work and one of the great works of the 19th cent. was The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (5 vol., 1849-61). Its brilliant narrative style and its vivid recreation of the social world of the 17th cent. made it an unprecedented success. The work has been criticized, however, for its failure to achieve objectivity, primarily because of Macaulay's Whig and Protestant bias. He also wrote several notable short biographical essays on Bacon, Johnson, Warren Hastings, and others. His poetical work, the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), celebrated the great events of Roman history.

Bibliography: See his letters, ed. by T. Pinney (6 vol., 1974-77); Sir G. O. Trevelyan (his nephew), The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (1876; repr., 2 vol., 1961); biographies by R. C. Beatty (1938, repr. 1971), J. Clive (1987), and O. D. Edwards (1988).

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1st Baron (1800–59) British historian, essayist, and philanthropist. As a civil servant in India (1834–38) he established an English system of education and devised a new criminal code, before returning to Britain and devoting himself to literature and politics. Among his best-known works are The Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) and his History of England (1849–61), which covers the period from the accession of James II to the death of William III from a Whig standpoint.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1st Baron (1800–59). Poet, historian, and politician. Of Scottish presbyterian ancestry, he was the son of Zachary Macaulay, the evangelical anti-slaver and co-founder of the Clapham sect. A child prodigy, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he acquired an early reputation as a Whig orator and a later reputation as a formidable contributor to the Edinburgh Review, where he first published most of his greatest essays. A Whig MP for Calne, Leeds, and Edinburgh, he became secretary at war, paymaster-general, and was involved in drafting a new penal code for India. His Lays of Ancient Rome appeared in 1842, four years after he had projected the future History of England. The History was published between 1848 and 1862. Originally intended as a history of England since 1688, Macaulay had only reached 1702 by the time of his death. The History can be regarded as a triumphant reply to David Hume's History of England and its attack on the Whig historiographical tradition, setting the terms of a new Whig historiography which survived until the middle of the 20th cent.

Nicholas Phillipson