Henry Goulburn exhibited little interest in his family tree which, notwithstanding its transplantation to the tropics, had produced a less than luxuriant foliage and all too few blooms. He understood that his ancestors had come from County Chester before migrating to Jamaica in the late seventeenth century. Had he been more concerned with his origins, he might have traced their roots back a further four hundred years when two of the sons of David de Malpas, lord of the moiety of the barony, had assumed the name of the manor of Golborne David. In styling themselves David de Golborne and...

Henry Goulburn’s Jamaican inheritance proved to be a lifelong burden. A property which at the time of his birth was generally regarded as one of the most enviable of assets had by the time of his death become a crippling liability. Throughout his adulthood, he had reason constantly to regret the extent to which his material comforts were tied to the profitability of Amity Hall. In the changing climate of opinion with respect to slavery, which as fate would have it coincided with his own development from youth to maturity, possession of a sugar estate and ownership of its workforce...

Henry Goulburn owed a debt of gratitude to Matthew Montagu which he knew he would never be able fully to repay. Montagu had come to the assistance of his mother; Montagu had welcomed him into his home, treating him as a member of the family; Montagu had taken his education in hand and ensured that he was prepared for a life of public service; Montagu had encouraged him to enter Parliament, introduced him to his close friend Spencer Perceval, and enrolled him in the Tory leader’s coterie of personal followers; and it was to Montagu’s seat for the Cornish patronage...

It was a disconsolate pair of Goulburns who returned to London early in the new year, Henry’s sense of diplomatic failure was matched by his wife’s apprehension of domestic isolation once he returned to his office. She had grown used to his company in Ghent; but the candles were soon burning long into the night at Downing Street, following Bonaparte’s reclaiming of his French throne in March. Troops had to be found to form the army which Wellington was now to command in Flanders. Many of Wellington’s peninsular veterans had already been dispatched on the ill-fated expedition to the United...

The third decade of the century opened discouragingly for Lord Liverpool. Both he and the administration he led were showing signs of wear and tear. The death of George III early in 1820 finally brought the Prince Regent to the throne, and with him a retinue of complications. A floundering economy ensured that the political disenchantment was palpable, even though the government survived the obligatory general election, and in this context George IV’s demand for a more regal allowance was characteristically inopportune. The opposition had campaigned almost to a man for a reduction of the Civil List. His ministers’ refusal...

Goulburn returned to London early in February 1823 to find the capital locked in an arctic embrace and the streets deep in snow. He was given a warm welcome by the Peels, and after an evening with the dramatically beautiful but conversationally limited Julia, he gallantly concluded that his own fireside was worth two of that of his friend. The parliamentary session also promised to generate heat, for the government was pledged to the introduction of additional measures “to promote and secure the tranquillity” of Ireland and “to improve the habits and condition of the people.” The new chancellor of...

Tragedy and farce were the leading productions of the political stage during the autumn of 1827. Canning’s death within weeks of his finally being cast in the starring role saw Goulburn’s old friend Frederick Robinson, now Lord Goderich, nervously enter the spotlight While Goderich’s sympathy with Catholic emancipation had seen him join Canning’s ministry, he was ill equipped to hold together the fractious coalition of Tories and Whigs. “I can perfectly understand fourteen persons of very moderate abilities, carrying on a government provided they have one common feeling and were bound by attachments or habits to each other,” one well-placed...

After a meal at Lord Ellenborough’s Roehampton home, Henry Goulburn travelled to Windsor in the company of several of his colleagues to attend the royal funeral in the evening of 15 July 1830. Scandalized as he had been by the new monarch’s bizarre conduct during the obsequies for his elder brother, the Duke of York, three years earlier, he was surely not surprised by William IV’s unconventional behaviour on this occasion. Indeed, the royal dignity was frequently to be bruised. At William’s first meeting of the Privy Council, a nervous clerk attempted to swear the councillors in the name of...

Late in 1832, Henry Goulburn initiated a discussion with Robert Peel on Tory strategy for the upcoming session of Parliament. Theirs remained a friendship founded on absolute trust and mutual admiration. “I can never have any difficulty in stating to you without reserve my wishes and feelings upon any subject,” Goulburn declared, “for I am confident that the same regard for me which would lead you to give due consideration to what I might state would equally prevent you being unduly biased by any ill-judged or erroneous opinions which I might appear to you to entertain.” In this spirit, he...

Many Tories were confident that Melbourne’s second administration would be as short-lived as his first. To them, it appeared to be humiliatingly dependent for its Commons majority on the Radicals and the unpredictable Daniel O’Connell. This impression was strengthened by a spate of liberal appointments, which not a few observers interpreted as a signal that the prime minister had abandoned hope of a reconcilation with Stanley and Graham. Indeed, the latter was soon echoing Goulburn with his dismissal of the cabinet as a collection of Jacobins and infidels. As for public confidence in the new ministers, a stunning by-election defeat...

Henry Goulburn fretted that ill discipline among the rank and file would bedevil the government, embracing as the Conservative party did the most zealous defenders of the church, an agricultural interest sure to resent liberal Toryism’s preoccupation with commerce and industry, and paternalists averse to their leader’s hard-headed if not hard-hearted attitude towards social issues. For his part, Peel increasingly saw the solution to working-class distress and disaffection in an expanding economy, which would create work and generate wealth. Full employment and full stomachs were the best remedies for radicalism.¹

The executive that Peel led and expected his back-benchers dutifully...

As 1844 neared its end, Henry Goulburn sensed that his career did not have a long distance to run. He had celebrated his sixtieth year in the spring and was approaching the thirty-eighth anniversary of his entrance to Parliament. He had served “in various offices of more or less importance” for almost a quarter of a century. Like many other men “of uncertain fortune who embark in public life,” his private affairs had “suffered prejudice” from his “attention to the business of the public.” Naturally, he was anxious to provide for his family. In 1842 he had secured for his...

Peel had prepared his colleagues for the inevitability of resignation if they were defeated on the Coercion Bill. Moreover, there was not any realistic prospect of a dissolution producing a majority “agreeing with the Government in general principles of Policy.” This analysis was endorsed, without a dissenting voice, by the cabinet when it met on 26 June 1846, and the following evening the prime minister tendered his resignation to the queen. Yet there had already been some intrigue by a faction that included Ellenborough, who had entered the cabinet in December following his recall from India, to press Peel and...