ABSTRACT
The most striking new political personality of the 1880s was Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-95), the expositor of 'Tory Democracy'. 1 The meteoric career of the 'Grand Young Man' was substantially concentrated within this one decade. Churchill, the younger son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, had entered Parliament for the family borough of Woodstock in 1874; but he did not come to the fore until the Gladstone Government took office in 1880. The audacious and humorous sallies of the group which became known as the 'Fourth Party' - it comprised Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Woolf, J. E. Gorst, and A. J. Balfour - then began to attract national notice. Despite their nickname the quartet remained within the Conservative ranks; but they were dissatisfied with what they rightly regarded as the feeble opposition offered to Gladstone by Sir Stafford Northcote and other Conservative leaders in the Commons. Churchill led the Fourth Party in Gladstone-baiting, to the dismay of Gladstone's admiring private secretary. 'Its aim is to turn into ridicule grave statements of Mr. Gladstone and others; to scoff and laugh; to "draw" the Prime Minister; to lay a trap for the Government; to have in short a bit of "sport"; to get up a row; to provoke a scene.' 2
