   #copyright

William Gladstone

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1750-1900

   The Rt Hon. William Gladstone
   William Gladstone
     __________________________________________________________________

   Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
   In office
   3 December 1868 –  17 February 1874
   Preceded by Benjamin Disraeli
   Succeeded by Benjamin Disraeli
   In office
   23 April 1880 –  9 June 1885
   Preceded by The Earl of Beaconsfield
   Succeeded by The Marquess of Salisbury
   In office
   1 February 1886 –  20 July 1886
   Preceded by The Marquess of Salisbury
   Succeeded by The Marquess of Salisbury
   In office
   15 August 1892 –  2 March 1894
   Preceded by The Marquess of Salisbury
   Succeeded by The Earl of Rosebery
     __________________________________________________________________

   Chancellor of the Exchequer
   In office
   December 28, 1852 –  February 28, 1855
   Preceded by Benjamin Disraeli
   Succeeded by George Cornewall Lewis
   In office
   June 18, 1859 –  June 26, 1866
   Preceded by Benjamin Disraeli
   Succeeded by Benjamin Disraeli
   In office
   August 11, 1873 –  February 17, 1874
   Preceded by Robert Lowe
   Succeeded by Stafford Northcote
   In office
   April 28, 1880 –  December 16, 1882
   Preceded by Stafford Northcote
   Succeeded by Hugh Childers
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born 29 December 1809
   Liverpool, England
   Died 19 May 1898 (age 88)
   Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, Wales
   Political party Conservative and Liberal
   Religion Church of England ( Low church)

   William Ewart Gladstone ( 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British
   Liberal Party statesman and Prime Minister ( 1868– 1874, 1880– 1885,
   1886 and 1892– 1894). He was a notable political reformer, known for
   his populist speeches, and was for many years the main political rival
   of Benjamin Disraeli.

   Gladstone was famously at odds with Queen Victoria for much of his
   career. She once complained "He always addresses me as if I were a
   public meeting." Gladstone was known affectionately by his supporters
   as the "Grand Old Man" (Disraeli is said to have remarked that GOM
   should have stood for God's Only Mistake) or "The People's William." He
   is still regarded as one of the greatest British prime ministers, with
   Winston Churchill and others citing Gladstone as their inspiration.

Early life

   Born in Liverpool, England at 62 Rodney Street in 1809, William Ewart
   Gladstone was the fourth son of the merchant Sir John Gladstones and
   his second wife, Anne MacKenzie Robertson. The final "s" was later
   dropped from the family surname. Although Gladstone was born and
   brought up in Liverpool and always retained a slight Lancashire accent,
   he was of Scottish descent on both his mother's and father's side of
   the family. Gladstone was educated at Eton College, and in 1828
   matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford where he took Classics and
   Mathematics in order to obtain a double first class degree despite the
   fact that he had no great interest in mathematics. In December 1831
   after sitting for his final examinations, he learned that he had indeed
   achieved the double first he had long desired. Gladstone served as
   President of the Oxford Union debating society, where he developed a
   reputation as a fine orator, a reputation that later followed him into
   the House of Commons. At university Gladstone was a Tory and denounced
   Whig proposals for parliamentary reform.
   Gladstone in the 1830s.
   Gladstone in the 1830s.

   He was first elected to Parliament in 1832 as Conservative MP for
   Newark. Initially he was a disciple of High Toryism, opposing the
   abolition of slavery and factory legislation. In 1838 he published a
   book, The State in its Relations with the Church, which argued that the
   goal of the state should be to promote and defend the interests of the
   Church of England. In 1839, he married Catherine Glynne, to whom he
   remained married until his death 59 years later.

   In 1840, Gladstone began to rescue and rehabilitate London prostitutes,
   actually walking the streets of London himself and encouraging the
   women he encountered to change their ways. He continued this practice
   even after he'd been elected Prime Minister decades later.

Minister under Peel

   Gladstone was re-elected in 1841. In September 1842 he lost the
   forefinger of his left hand in an accident while reloading a gun;
   thereafter he wore a glove or finger sheath (stall). In the second
   ministry of Robert Peel, he served as President of the Board of Trade (
   1843– 44). He resigned in 1845 over the Maynooth Seminary issue, a
   matter of conscience for him. In order to improve relations with Irish
   Catholics, Peel's government had proposed increasing the annual grant
   paid to the Seminary for training Catholic priests. Gladstone, who had
   previously argued in a book that a Protestant country should not pay
   money to other churches, supported the increase in the Maynooth grant
   and voted for it in Commons, but resigned rather than face charges that
   he'd compromised his principles to remain in office. After accepting
   Gladstone's resignation, Peel confessed to a friend, "I really have
   great difficulty sometimes in exactly comprehending what he means."

   Gladstone returned to Peel's government as Colonial Secretary in
   December. The following year, Peel's government fell over the PM's
   repeal of the Corn Laws and Gladstone followed his leader into a course
   of separation from mainstream Conservatives. After Peel's death in
   1850, Gladstone emerged as the leader of the Peelites in the House of
   Commons.

   As Chancellor he pushed to extend the free trade liberalisations in the
   1840s and worked to reduce public expenditures, policies that, when
   combined with his moral and religious ideals, became known as "
   Gladstonian Liberalism". He was re-elected for the University of Oxford
   in 1847 and became a constant critic of Lord Palmerston.

   In 1848 he also founded the Church Penitentiary Association for the
   Reclamation of Fallen Women. In May 1849 he began his most active
   "rescue work" with "fallen women" and met prostitutes late at night on
   the street, in his house, or in their houses, writing their names in a
   private notebook. He aided the House of Mercy at Clewer near Windsor
   (which exercised extreme in-house discipline) and spent much time
   arranging employment for ex-prostitutes. There is no evidence he ever
   actually used their services, and it is known that his wife supported
   these unconventional activities. In 1927, during a court case over
   published claims that he had had improper relationships with some of
   these women, the jury unanimously found that the evidence "completely
   vindicated the high moral character of the late Mr W.E. Gladstone."

   From 1849 until 1859, Gladstone is known to have drawn a picture of a
   whip in his diary, suggesting that he may have suffered temptation,
   either in the presence of the prostitutes or from "marginally salacious
   (published) material" he read (as Roy Jenkins has described it), and
   may have used self-flagellation as a means of self-regulation or
   repentance, a practice also adopted by Cardinal Newman and Edward
   Pusey.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

   A contemplative Gladstone
   A contemplative Gladstone

   After visiting Naples in 1850, Gladstone began to support Neapolitan
   opponents of the Bourbon rulers: his "support" consisted of a couple of
   letters that he sent from Naples to the Parliament of London,
   describing the "awful conditions" of the Kingdom of Southern Italy and
   claiming that "it is the negation of God erected to a system". These
   letters, containing a long list of absurd lies and propagandistic
   inventions, provoked sensitive reactions in the whole Europe, and
   prepared the path to the invasion and annexion of the Kingdom of the
   Two Sicilies by the Kingdom of Piedmont, with the following foundation
   of modern Italy. In 1852, following the ascendance of Lord Aberdeen, as
   premier, head of a coalition of Whigs and Peelites, Gladstone became
   Chancellor of the Exchequer and unsuccessfully tried to abolish the
   income tax. Instead he ended up raising it because of the Crimean War.
   He served until 1855. Lord Stanley became Prime Minister in 1858, but
   Gladstone declined a position in his government, opting not to work
   with Benjamin Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of
   the House of Commons. In 1859, Lord Palmerston formed a new mixed
   government with Radicals included, and Gladstone again joined the
   government as Chancellor of the Exchequer, leaving the Conservatives to
   become part of the new Liberal Party.

   During consideration of his Budget for 1860, it was generally assumed
   that Gladstone would use the budget's surplus of £5 million to abolish
   the income tax, as in 1853 he had promised to do this before the decade
   was out. Instead, Gladstone proposed to increase it and use the
   additional revenue to abolish duties on paper, a controversial policy
   because the duties had traditionally inflated the costs of publishing
   and disseminating radical working-class ideas. Although Palmerston
   supported continuation of the duties, using them and income tax
   revenues to make armament purchases, a majority of his Cabinet
   supported Gladstone. The Bill to abolish duties on paper narrowly
   passed Commons but was rejected by the House of Lords. As no money bill
   had been rejected by Lords for over two hundred years, a furore arose
   over this vote. The next year, Gladstone included the abolition of
   paper duties in a Finance Bill in order to force the Lords to accept
   it, and accept it they did.

   Significantly, Gladstone succeeded in steadily reducing the income tax
   over the course of his tenure as Chancellor. In 1861 the tax was
   reduced to ninepence; in 1863 to sevenpence; in 1864 to fivepence; and
   in 1865 to fourpence. Gladstone believed that government was
   extravagant and wasteful with taxpayers' money and so sought to let
   money "fructify in the pockets of the people" by keeping taxation
   levels down through "peace and retrenchment".

   When Gladstone first joined Palmerston's government in 1859, he opposed
   further electoral reform, but he moved toward the Left during
   Palmerston's last premiership, and by 1865 he was firmly in favour of
   enfranchising the working classes in towns. This latter policy created
   friction with Palmerston, who strongly opposed enfranchisement. At the
   beginning of each session, Gladstone would passionately urge the
   Cabinet to adopt new policies, while Palmerston would fixedly stare at
   a paper before him. At a lull in Gladstone's speech, Palmerston would
   smile, rap the table with his knuckles, and interject pointedly, "Now,
   my Lords and gentlemen, let us go to business".

   As Chancellor, Gladstone made a controversial speech at Newcastle on 7
   October 1862 in which he supported the independence of the Confederate
   States of America in the American Civil War, claiming that Jefferson
   Davis had "made a nation". Great Britain was officially neutral at the
   time, and Gladstone later regretted the Newcastle speech. In May 1864
   Gladstone said that he saw no reason in principle why all mentally able
   men could not be enfranchised, but admitted that this would only come
   about once the working-classes themselves showed more interest in the
   subject. Queen Victoria was not pleased with this statement, and an
   outraged Palmerston considered it seditious incitement to agitation.

   Gladstone's support for electoral reform and disestablishment of the
   Anglican Church in Ireland had alienated him from his constituents in
   his Oxford University seat, and he lost it in the 1865 general
   election. A month later, however, he stood as a candidate in South
   Lancashire, where he was elected third MP (South Lancashire at this
   time elected three MPs). Palmerston campaigned for Gladstone in Oxford
   because he believed that his constituents would keep him "partially
   muzzled". A victorious Gladstone told his new constituency, "At last,
   my friends, I am come among you; and I am come--to use an expression
   which has become very famous and is not likely to be forgotten--I am
   come 'unmuzzled'."

   In 1858 Gladstone took up the hobby of tree felling, mostly of oak
   trees, an exercise he continued with enthusiasm until he was 81 in
   1891. Eventually, he became notorious for this activity, prompting Lord
   Randolph Churchill to snicker, "The forest laments in order that Mr.
   Gladstone may perspire." Less noticed at the time was his practice of
   replacing the trees he'd felled with newly-planted saplings. Possibly
   related to this hobby is the fact that Gladstone was a lifelong
   bibliophile.

First ministry, 1868–1874

   Lord Russell retired in 1867 and Gladstone became a leader of the
   Liberal party. In the next general election in 1868 he was defeated in
   Lancashire but was elected MP for Greenwich, it being quite common then
   for candidates to stand in two constituencies simultaneously. He became
   Prime Minister for the first time and remained in the office until
   1874.

   In the 1860s and 1870s, Gladstonian Liberalism was characterised by a
   number of policies intended to improve individual liberty and loosen
   political and economic restraints. First was the minimization of public
   expenditure on the premise that the economy and society were best
   helped by allowing people to spend as they saw fit. Secondly, his
   foreign policy aimed at promoting peace to help reduce expenditures and
   taxation and enhance trade. Thirdly, laws that prevented people from
   acting freely to improve themselves were reformed.

   Gladstone's first premiership instituted reforms in the British Army,
   Civil Service, and local government to cut restrictions on individual
   advancement. He instituted abolition of the sale of commissions in the
   army as well as court reorganization. In foreign affairs his overriding
   aim was to promote peace and understanding, characterized by his
   settlement of the Alabama Claims in 1872 in favour of the Americans.

   The issue of disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was used by
   Gladstone to unite the Liberal Party for government in 1868. The Act
   was passed in 1869 and meant that Irish Roman Catholics did not need to
   pay their tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland. He also instituted
   Cardwell's Army reform that in 1869 made peacetime flogging illegal;
   the Irish Land Act; and the Forster's Education Act in 1870. In 1871 he
   instituted the University Test Act. In 1872, he secured passage of the
   Ballot Act for secret voting ballots. In 1873, his leadership led to
   the passage of laws restructuring the High Courts.

Vatican controversy and the Midlothian Campaign

   In 1874, the Liberals lost the election. In the wake of Benjamin
   Disraeli's victory, Gladstone retired temporarily from the leadership
   of the Liberal party, although he retained his seat in the House.

   Gladstone was outraged at the Roman Catholic Church's Decree of Papal
   Infallibility and set about to refute it. In November 1874 he published
   the pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance.
   In it, Gladstone claimed that this decree had placed British Catholics
   in a dilemma over their loyalty to the Crown and their loyalty to the
   Pope. Gladstone urged British Catholics to reject papal infallibility
   as they had opposed the Spanish Armada of 1588. The pamphlet sold
   150,000 copies by the end of 1874. In February 1875 Gladstone published
   a second pamphlet which was a defence of his earlier pamphlet and a
   reply to his critics, entitled Vaticanism: an Answer to Reproofs and
   Replies. He described the Catholic Church as "an Asian monarchy:
   nothing but one giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of
   religious subservience". He further claimed that the Pope wanted to
   destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then
   to hide these "crimes against liberty beneath a suffocating cloud of
   incense".

   A pamphlet he published in 1876, Bulgarian Horrors and the Questions of
   the East, attacked the Disraeli government for its indifference to the
   violent repression of the Bulgarian rebellion in Ottoman Empire (Known
   as the Bulgarian April uprising). An often-quoted excerpt illustrates
   his formidable rhetorical powers:

          "Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible
          manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and
          their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbachis, their Kaimakans and
          their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear
          out from the province that they have desolated and profaned.
          This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the
          only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead,
          the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child;
          to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the
          laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of
          mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail,
          there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose
          indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that
          which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which
          remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all
          the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring
          up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking
          with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of
          crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a
          damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that
          the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible
          repetition would spread that shame over the world."

   During his rousing election campaign (the so-called Midlothian
   campaign) of 1879, he spoke against Disraeli's foreign policies during
   the ongoing Second Anglo-Afghan War in Afghanistan. (See Great Game).
   He saw the war as "great dishonour" and also criticised British conduct
   in the Zulu War.

Second ministry, 1880–1885

   William Gladstone by Phil May.
   William Gladstone by Phil May.

   In 1880 the Liberals won again, and the new Liberal leader Lord
   Hartington, retired in Gladstone's favour. Gladstone won his
   constituency election in Midlothian and also in Leeds, where he had
   also been adopted as a candidate. As he could lawfully only serve as MP
   for one constituency, Leeds was passed to his son Herbert. One of his
   other sons, Henry, was also elected as an MP.

   Queen Victoria asked Lord Hartington, to form a ministry, but he
   persuaded her to send for Gladstone. Gladstone's second administration
   — both as PM and again as Chancellor of the Exchequer till 1882 —
   lasted from June 1880 to June 1885. Gladstone had opposed himself to
   the " colonial lobby" pushing for the scramble for Africa. He thus saw
   the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, First Boer War and the war
   against the Mahdi in Sudan.

   However, he could not respect his electoral promise to disengage from
   Egypt. June 1882 saw a riot in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, with
   about 300 people being killed as part of the Urabi Revolt. In
   Parliament an angry and retributive mood developed against Egypt, and
   the Cabinet approved the bombardment of Urabi's gun emplacements by
   Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour and the subsequent landing of British
   troops to restore order to the city. Gladstone defended this in the
   Commons by exclaiming that Egypt was "in a state of military violence,
   without any law whatsoever".

   In 1881 he established the Irish Coercion Act, which permitted the
   Viceroy to detain people for as "long as was thought necessary". He
   also extended the franchise to agricultural labourers and others in the
   1884 Reform Act, which gave the counties the same franchise as the
   boroughs— adult male householders and £10 lodgers—and added about six
   million to the total number who could vote in parliamentary elections.
   Parliamentary reform continued with the Redistribution of Seats Act
   1885.

   Gladstone was becoming increasingly uneasy about the direction in which
   British politics was moving. In a letter to Lord Acton on 11 February
   1885, Gladstone criticised Tory Democracy as "demagogism" that "put
   down pacific, law-respecting, economic elements that ennobled the old
   Conservatism" but "still, in secret, as obstinately attached as ever to
   the evil principle of class interests". He found contemporary
   Liberalism better, "but far from being good". Gladstone claimed that
   this Liberalism's "pet idea is what they call construction, that is to
   say, taking into the hands of the State the business of the individual
   man". Both Tory Democracy and this new Liberalism, Gladstone wrote, had
   done "much to estrange me, and had for many, many years".

   The fall of General Gordon in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1885 was a major blow
   to Gladstone's popularity. Many believed Gladstone had neglected
   military affairs and had not acted promptly enough to save the besieged
   Gordon. Critics inverted his acronym, "G.O.M." (for "Grand Old Man"),
   to "M.O.G." (for "Murderer of Gordon"). He resigned as Prime Minister
   in 1885 and declined Victoria's offer of an Earldom.

Third ministry, 1886

   Gladstone speaking during a Commons debate on Irish Home Rule on 8
   April 1886.
   Gladstone speaking during a Commons debate on Irish Home Rule on 8
   April 1886.

   In 1886 Gladstone's party was allied with Irish Nationalists to defeat
   Lord Salisbury's government; Gladstone regained his position as PM and
   combined the office with that of Lord Privy Seal. During this
   administration he first introduced his Home Rule Bill for Ireland. The
   issue split the Liberal Party and the bill was thrown out on the second
   reading, ending his government after only a few months and inaugurating
   another headed by Lord Salisbury.

Fourth ministry, 1892–1894

   In 1892 Gladstone was re-elected Prime Minister for the fourth and
   final time. In February 1893 he re-introduced a Home Rule Bill. It
   provided for the formation of a parliament for Ireland, or in modern
   terminology, a regional assembly of the type Northern Ireland gained
   from the Good Friday Agreement. The Home Rule Bill did not offer
   Ireland independence, but the Irish Parliamentary Party had not
   demanded independence in the first place. The Bill was passed by the
   Commons but rejected by the House of Lords on the grounds that it had
   gone too far. On March 1, 1894, in his last speech to the House of
   Commons, Gladstone asked his allies to override this most recent veto.
   He resigned two days later, although he retained his seat in the
   Commons until 1895. Years later, as Irish independence loomed, King
   George V exclaimed to a friend, "What fools we were not to pass Mr.
   Gladstone's bill when we had the chance!"

Final years

   Gladstone's grave in Westminster Abbey
   Gladstone's grave in Westminster Abbey

   In 1895 at the age of 85, Gladstone bequeathed £40,000 and much of his
   library to found St Deiniol's Library, the only residential library in
   Britain. Despite his advanced age, he himself lugged most of his 23,000
   books a quarter mile to their new home, using his wheelbarrow.

   In 1896 in his last noteworthy speech, he denounced Armenian massacres
   by Ottomans in a talk delivered at Liverpool.

   Gladstone died at Hawarden Castle in 1898 at the age of 88 from
   metastatic cancer that had started behind his cheekbone. His coffin was
   transported on the London Underground before he was buried in
   Westminster Abbey. His wife, Catherine Glynne Gladstone, was later laid
   to rest with him (see image at left).

   A statue of Gladstone, erected in 1872, stands in the Great Hall of St
   George's Hall in Liverpool . A statue of Gladstone, erected in 1905, is
   situated at Aldwych, London, nearby to the Royal Courts of Justice .
   There is also a statue of him in Glasgow's George Square and in other
   towns around the country.

   Liverpool's Crest Hotel was renamed The Gladstone Hotel in his honour
   in the early 1990s, but in 2006 was renamed again as The Liner Hotel.

   Near to Hawarden in the town of Mancot, there is a small hospital named
   after Catherine Gladstone. A statue of her husband also stands near the
   High School in Hawarden.

Gladstone's Governments

     * First Gladstone Ministry (December 1868–February 1874)
     * Second Gladstone Ministry (April 1880–June 1885)
     * Third Gladstone Ministry (February–August 1886)
     * Fourth Gladstone Ministry (August 1892–February 1894)

Biographies

     * John Morley, The Life of Gladstone (1903)
     * D.W. Bebbington, William Ewart Gladstone
     * Eric Brad, William Gladstone
     * Osbert Burdett, W. E. Gladstone (1928)
     * F. Birrell, Gladstone (1933)
     * E. Eyck, Gladstone (1938)
     * Philip Magnus, Gladstone: A Biography (1954)
     * E.G. Collieu, Gladstone (1968)
     * Richard Shannon, Gladstone: 1809-1865 (1985)
     * H.C. Matthew, Gladstone: 1809-98 (1995)
     * Richard Shannon, Gladstone: Volume II, 1865-1898 (1999)
     * Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (1995) ( ISBN 0-333-66209-1)

Political offices

   Parliament of the United Kingdom
   Preceded by
   William Farnworth Handley
   Thomas Wilde Member of Parliament for Newark
   2-seat constituency
   with William Farnworth Handley, to 1835
   Thomas Wilde, 1835–1841
   Lord John Manners, 1841–1846
   1832– 1846 Succeeded by
   Lord John Manners
   John Stuart
   Preceded by
   Thomas Grimston Bucknall Estcourt
   Sir Robert Harry Inglis Member of Parliament for Oxford University
   2-seat constituency
   with Sir Robert Harry Inglis, to 1854
   Sir William Heathcote, 1854–1865
   1847– 1865 Succeeded by
   Sir William Heathcote
   Gathorne Hardy
   Preceded by
   Algernon Fulke Egerton
   William John Legh
   Charles Turner Member of Parliament for South Lancashire
   3-seat constituency
   with Algernon Fulke Egerton,
   Charles Turner,
   1865– 1868 Succeeded by
   Seat abolished
   Preceded by
   Charles Tilston Bright
   David Salomons Member of Parliament for Greenwich
   2-seat constituency
   with David Salomons, to 1873
   Thomas William Boord, 1873–1880
   1868– 1880 Succeeded by
   Thomas William Boord
   Baron Henry de Worms
   Preceded by
   William Montagu-Douglas-Scott Member of Parliament for Midlothian
   1880– 1895 Succeeded by
   Thomas Gibson-Carmichael
   Political offices
   Preceded by
   The Earl of Ripon President of the Board of Trade
   1843–1845 Succeeded by
   The Earl of Dalhousie
   Preceded by
   The Lord Stanley Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
   1845–1846 Succeeded by
   The Earl Grey
   Preceded by
   Benjamin Disraeli Chancellor of the Exchequer
   1852–1855 Succeeded by
   Sir George Lewis, Bt
   Preceded by
   Sir John Young Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands
   1859 Succeeded by
   Sir Henry Knight Storks
   Preceded by
   Benjamin Disraeli Chancellor of the Exchequer
   1859–1866 Succeeded by
   Benjamin Disraeli
   Preceded by
   The Viscount Palmerston Leader of the House of Commons
   1865–1866
   Preceded by
   The Earl Russell Leader of the British Liberal Party
   1866–1875 Succeeded by
   The Earl Granville
   and Marquess of Hartington
   Preceded by
   Benjamin Disraeli Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
   1868–1874 Succeeded by
   Benjamin Disraeli
   Leader of the House of Commons
   1868–1874
   Preceded by
   Robert Lowe Chancellor of the Exchequer
   1873–1874 Succeeded by
   Sir Stafford Northcote, Bt
   Preceded by
   The Earl Granville
   and Marquess of Hartington Leader of the British Liberal Party
   1880–1894 Succeeded by
   The Earl of Rosebery
   Preceded by
   The Earl of Beaconsfield Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
   1880–1885 Succeeded by
   The Marquess of Salisbury
   Preceded by
   Sir Stafford Northcote, Bt Leader of the House of Commons
   1880–1885 Succeeded by
   Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Bt
   Chancellor of the Exchequer
   1880–1882 Succeeded by
   Hugh Childers
   Preceded by
   The Marquess of Salisbury Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
   1886 Succeeded by
   The Marquess of Salisbury
   Preceded by
   The Earl of Harrowby Lord Privy Seal
   1886 Succeeded by
   The Earl Cadogan
   Preceded by
   Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Bt Leader of the House of Commons
   1886 Succeeded by
   Lord Randolph Churchill
   Preceded by
   The Marquess of Salisbury Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
   1892–1894 Succeeded by
   The Earl of Rosebery
   Preceded by
   The Earl Cadogan Lord Privy Seal
   1892–1894 Succeeded by
   The Lord Tweedmouth
   Preceded by
   Arthur James Balfour Leader of the House of Commons
   1892–1894 Succeeded by
   Sir William Harcourt
   Honorary Titles
   Preceded by
   None Lord Rector of Edinburgh University
   1859–1865 Succeeded by
   Thomas Carlyle

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