Introduction

Sir Robert Peel is, with Gladstone and Disraeli, one of the three most celebrated prime ministers in nineteenth-century British history. In terms of legislative achievement, he was probably the most successful of all. Some argue that his reforms contributed more than those of any other prime minister to improving standards of living for ordinary people. The Manchester Guardian referred to a ‘most striking and extraordinary expression of popular feeling’ on the occasion of Peel’s untimely death on 2 July 1850 as the result of a riding accident suffered two days earlier. This expression soon had tangible outcomes. In Manchester, the then immense sum of £3,000 (worth more than £200,000 at current values) was raised by the town. An elaborate Peel monument was unveiled three years later. Manchester was not, of course, alone. Peel monuments and parks sprang up all over the country. Those who mourned Peel that summer credited him with giving the poor cheap bread by repealing the Corn Laws in 1846. The often high, and frequently volatile, level of bread prices had been one of the most destabilizing features of early-nineteenth-century Britain, and much misery, leading to economic and social conflict, had resulted. Some historians have also credited Peel with laying the foundations of mid-Victorian prosperity by expert management of national finances and by accelerating free-trade policies which opened up new markets for British manufacturers.