and titles to Edward II., the earldom thus lapsing to the crown.
The earldom of Salisbury was granted in 1337 by Edward III. to William de Montacute, Lord Montacute (1301–1344), in whose family it remained till 1400, when John, 3rd earl of this line, was attainted and his titles forfeited. His son Thomas (1388–1428) was restored in blood in 1421; and Thomas’s daughter and heiress, Alice, married Sir Richard Neville (1400–1460), a younger son of Ralph Neville, 1st earl of Westmorland and a grandson of John of Gaunt, who sat in parliament in right of his wife as earl of Salisbury; he was succeeded by his son Richard, on whose death without male issue in 1471 the earldom fell into abeyance. George Plantagenet, duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., who married Richard’s daughter and co-heiress, Isabel, became by a separate creation earl of Salisbury in 1472, but by his attainder in 1478 this title was forfeited, and immediately afterwards was granted to Edward Plantagenet, eldest son of Richard duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., on whose death in 1484 it became extinct.
Richard III.’s queen, Anne, was a sister of the above-mentioned Isabel, duchess of Clarence, and co-heiress with her of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. On the death of Queen Anne in 1485 the abeyance of the older creation terminated, Edward Plantagenet, eldest son of George duke of Clarence by Isabel Neville, becoming earl of Salisbury as successor to his mother’s right. He was attainted in 1504, five years after his execution, but the earldom then forfeited was restored to his sister Margaret (1474–1541), widow of Sir Richard Pole, in 1513. This lady was also attainted, with forfeiture of her titles, in 1539.
Sir Robert Cecil, second son of the 1st Lord Burghley (q. v.), was created earl of Salisbury (1605), having no connexion in blood with the former holders of the title. (See Salisbury, Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of.) In his family the earldom has remained till the present day, the 7th earl of the line having been created marquess of Salisbury in 1789.
See G. E. C., Complete Peerage, vol. vii. (1896).
SALISBURY, ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT GASCOYNE-CECIL,
3rd Marquess of (1830–1903), British statesman,
second son of James, 2nd marquess, by his first wife, Frances Mary Gascoyne, was born at Hatfield on the 3rd of February 1830, and was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1850. At Oxford he was an active member of the Union Debating Society. The first few years after leaving the university were spent by Lord Robert Cecil (as he then was) in travel, as far afield as New Zealand; but
in 1853 he was returned unopposed to the House of Commons
as Conservative member for Stamford, being elected in the same
year a fellow of All Souls. He made his maiden speech in
Parliament on the 7th of April 1854, in opposition to Lord John
Russell’s Oxford University Bill. The speech was marked
by scepticism as to the utility of reforms, and Lord Robert
prophesied that if the wishes of founders were disregarded, nobody would in future care to found anything. In 1857 he
Early years in Parliament.appeared as the author of his first Bill—for establishing the voting-paper system at parliamentary elections; and in the same year he married Georgina Caroline, daughter of Sir Edward Holt Alderson, a baron of the Court of Exchequer, a large share of whose great intellectual abilities she inherited. Lord Robert Cecil continued to be
active not only in politics, but, for several years, in journalism, the income he earned by his pen being then a matter of pecuniary
importance to him. One of his contemporaries at Oxford had
been Thomas Hamber of Oriel, who became editor of the Standard,
and during these years Cecil was an occasional contributor of
“leaders” to that paper. He also contributed to the Saturday
Review, founded in 1855 by his brother-in-law Beresford Hope,
and edited by his friend Douglas Cook; not infrequently he
wrote for the Quarterly (where, in 1867, he was to publish his
famous article on “the Conservative Surrender”); and in
1858 he contributed to Oxford Essays a paper on “The Theories of
Parliamentary Reform,” giving expression to the more intellectual
and aristocratic antagonism to doctrinaire Liberal views on the
subject, while admitting the existence of many anomalies in the
existing electoral system. In February of the next year, when
Disraeli introduced his Reform Bill with its “fancy franchises,”
the member for Stamford was prominent among its critics from
the Tory point of view. During the seven years that followed
Lord Robert was always ready to defend the Church, or the
higher interests of Conservatism and property; and his speeches
then, not less than later, showed a caustic quality and a tendency
to what became known as “blazing indiscretions.” For example,
when the repeal of the paper duty was being discussed in 1861,
he asked whether it “could be maintained that a person of any
education could learn anything worth knowing from a penny
paper”—a question the answer to which has been given by the
powerful, highly organized, and admirable Conservative penny
press of a subsequent day. A little later he declared the proceedings
of the Government “more worthy of an attorney than
of a statesman”; and on being rebuked, apologized—to the
attorneys. He also charged Lord John Russell with adopting
“a sort of tariff of insolence” in his dealings with foreign Powers,
strong and weak.
It was not, however, till the death of Palmerston and the removal of Lord John Russell to the House of Lords had brought Cabinet minister: the Franchise question: resignation 1867.Gladstone to the front that Lord Robert Cecil—who became Lord Cranborne by the death of his elder brother on the 14th of June 1865—began to be accepted as a politician of the first rank. His emergence coincided with the opening of the new area in British politics, ushered in by the practical steps taken to extend the parliamentary franchise. On the 12th of March 1866 Gladstone brought forward his measure to establish a £7 franchise in boroughs and a £14 franchise in counties, which were calculated to add 400,000 voters to the existing lists. Lord Cranborne met the Bill with a persistent opposition, his rigorous logic and merciless hostility to clap-trap tending strongly to reinforce the impassioned eloquence of Robert Lowe. But though he attacked the Government Bill both in principle and detail, he did not absolutely commit himself to a position of hostility to Reform of every kind; and on the .defeat of Gladstone’s Ministry no surprise was expressed at his joining the Cabinet of Lord Derby as secretary of state for India, even when it became known that a settlement of the Reform question was part of the Tory programme. The early months of the new Government’s tenure were marked by the incident of the Hyde Park riots; and if there had been members of the Cabinet and party who believed up to that time that the Reform question was not urgent the action of the Reform League and the London populace forced them to a different conclusion. On the 11th of February Disraeli informed the House of Commons that the Government intended to ask its assent to a series of thirteen resolutions; but when, on the 26th of February, the Liberal leaders demanded that the Government should produce a Bill, Disraeli at once consented to do so. The introduction of a Bill was, however, delayed by the resignation of Lord Cranborne, General Peel and Lord Carnarvon. The Cabinet had been considering two alternative measures, widely different in kind and extent, and the final decision between the two was taken in ten minutes (whence the nickname of the “Ten Minutes Bill”) at an informal gathering of the Cabinet held just before Derby was engaged to address a general meeting of the party. At a Cabinet council held on the 23rd of February measure A had been agreed upon, the three doubtful ministers having been persuaded that the checks and safeguards provided were sufficient; in the interval between Saturday and Monday they had come to the conclusion that the checks were inadequate; on Monday morning they had gone to Lord Derby and told him so; at two o’clock the rest of the Cabinet, hastily summoned, had been informed of the new situation, and had there and then, before the meeting at half-past two, agreed, in order to retain their three colleagues, to throw over measure A, and to present measure B to the country as the fruit of their matured and unanimous wisdom. Derby at the meeting, and Disraeli a few hours later in the House of Commons, explained their new
