ABSTRACT
Like virtually all prominent politicians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Robert Peel came from a background of considerable wealth. The source of that wealth, however, was far from orthodox in that it did not derive from large landholdings. Peel’s grandfather, also Robert who died in 1795, had been a yeoman farmer in east Lancashire, but his fortune was made in the emerging textile industry in partnership with his brother-in-law Jonathan Howarth. Peel’s father, another Robert, was given the substantial sum of £500 (worth more than £40,000 at current values) to develop his own calico-printing business, which he did in Bury from the early 1770s. The business flourished as the industrial revolution ‘took off’ in Lancashire in the 1780s and Peel senior expanded his operations into Bolton. By the time of his eldest son’s birth in 1788, he was employing more than 7,000 workers and the firm’s profits were exceeding £70,000 (nearly £6m at current values) in good years.
