ABSTRACT
Sir Robert Peel entered parliament in 1809, serving Perceval’s government as Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office (1810–12) and then Liverpool as Chief Secretary for Ireland (1812–18). His major responsibilities in this earlier period were as Home Secretary (1822–30) and as Leader of the House of Commons (1828–30). After replacing Wellington as leader of the Tory party in 1834, he served briefly as Prime Minister between 1834 and 1835. He then led the Opposition for the next six years until his victory in the 1841 general election gave him a second term of power until 1846. In the last phase of his life, between the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and his death in 1850, he headed a splinter group of free traders, known as ‘Peelites’.
