Assassination of Spencer Perceval
On 11 May 1812, at about 5:15 pm, Spencer Perceval, the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a Liverpool merchant with a grievance against the government. Bellingham was detained; four days after the murder, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Newgate Prison on 18 May, one week after the assassination and one month before the start of the War of 1812. Perceval remains the sole British prime minister to have been assassinated.
Perceval had led the Tory government since 1809, during a critical phase of the Napoleonic Wars. His determination to prosecute the war using the harshest of measures caused widespread poverty and unrest on the home front; thus the news of his death was a cause of rejoicing in the worst-affected parts of the country. Despite initial fears that the assassination might be linked to a general uprising, it transpired that Bellingham had acted alone, protesting against the government's failure to compensate him for his treatment a few years previously when he had been imprisoned in Russia for a trading debt. Bellingham's lack of remorse, and apparent certainty that his action was justified, raised questions about his sanity, but at his trial he was judged to be legally responsible for his actions. After Perceval's death, Parliament made generous provision to his widow and children and approved the erection of monuments. Thereafter his ministry was soon forgotten, his policies reversed, and he is generally better known for the manner of his death than for any of his achievements. Later historians have characterised Bellingham's hasty trial and execution as contrary to the principles of justice. The possibility that he was acting within a conspiracy, on behalf of a consortium of Liverpool traders hostile to Perceval's economic policies, was the subject of a 2012 study.
Background
Biography
Spencer Perceval was born on 1 November 1762, the second son from the second marriage of John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont. He attended Harrow School and, in 1780, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a noted scholar and prizewinner. A deeply religious boy, he became closely aligned with evangelicalism at Cambridge and remained faithful all his life. Under the rule of primogeniture, Perceval had no realistic prospect of a family inheritance and needed to earn his living; on leaving Cambridge in 1783, he entered Lincoln's Inn to train as a lawyer. After being called to the bar in 1786, Perceval joined the Midland Circuit, where his family connections helped him to acquire a lucrative practice. In 1790 he married Jane Wilson. The marriage proved happy and prolific; twelve children were born over the following fourteen years.Perceval's politics were highly conservative, and he acquired a reputation for his attacks on radicalism. As a junior prosecuting counsel in the trials of Thomas Paine and John Horne Tooke, he was noticed by senior politicians in the ruling Pitt ministry. In 1796, having refused the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, Perceval was elected to Parliament as the Tory member for Northampton, and won acclaim in 1798 with a speech defending William Pitt's government against attacks by the radicals Charles James Fox and Francis Burdett. He was generally seen as a rising star in his party; his short stature and slight build earned him the nickname "Little P".
Following Pitt's resignation in 1801, Perceval served as Solicitor General, and then as Attorney General, in the Addington ministry of 1801–1804, continuing in the latter office through the Pitt ministry of 1804–1806. His deep evangelical convictions led him to his unwavering opposition to the Roman Catholic Church and to Catholic emancipation, and his equally fervent support for the abolition of the slave trade, when he worked with fellow evangelicals such as William Wilberforce to secure the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.
When Pitt died in 1806 his government was succeeded by the cross-party "Ministry of All the Talents", under Lord Grenville. Perceval remained in opposition during this short-lived ministry, but when the Duke of Portland formed a new Tory administration in March 1807, Perceval took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Portland was elderly and ailing, and on his resignation in October 1809, Perceval succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury—the formal title by which prime ministers were then known—after a wounding internecine leadership struggle. In addition to his duties as head of the government he retained the Chancellorship, largely because he could find no minister of appropriate stature who would accept the office.
Troubled times
Perceval's government was weakened by the refusals to serve of former ministers such as George Canning and William Huskisson. It faced massive problems at a time of considerable industrial unrest and at a low point in the war against Napoleon. The unsuccessful Walcheren Campaign in the Netherlands was unravelling, and the army of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, was pinned down in Portugal. At the outset of his ministry Perceval enjoyed the strong support of King George III, but in October 1810 the king lapsed into insanity and was permanently incapacitated. Perceval's relationship with the Prince of Wales, who became prince regent, was initially far less cordial, but in the following months he and Perceval established a reasonable affinity, perhaps motivated in part by the prince's fear that the king might recover and find his favourite statesman deposed.When the final British forces withdrew from Walcheren in February 1810, Wellington's force in Portugal was Britain's only military presence on the continent of Europe. Perceval insisted that it remain there, against the advice of most of his ministers and at great cost to the British exchequer. Ultimately this decision was vindicated, but for the time being his main weapon against Napoleon was the Orders in Council of 1807, inherited from the previous ministry. These had been issued as a tit-for-tat response to Napoleon's Continental System, a measure designed to destroy Britain's overseas trade. The Orders permitted the Royal Navy to detain any ship thought to be carrying goods to France or its continental allies. With both warring powers employing similar strategies, world trade shrank, leading to widespread hardship and dissatisfaction in key British industries, particularly textiles and cotton. There were frequent calls for modification or repeal of the Orders, which damaged relations with the United States to the point that, by early 1812, the two nations were on the brink of war. British manufacturers and merchants, many of whom faced bankruptcy, petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the Orders. Petitions from key industrial regions, including Yorkshire, Lancashire, Birmingham, and the Staffordshire Potteries, were supported by testimonies from over one hundred witnesses who detailed the economic devastation, poverty, and widespread distress caused by the restrictions on trade. Critics of the Orders argued that their repeal was essential to restoring American trade and alleviating domestic hardship.
At home, Perceval upheld his earlier reputation as scourge of radicals, imprisoning Burdett and William Cobbett, the latter of whom continued to attack the government from his prison cell. Perceval was also faced with the anti-machine protests known as "Luddism", to which he reacted by introducing a bill making machine-breaking a capital offence; in the House of Lords the youthful Lord Byron called the legislation "barbarous". Despite these difficulties Perceval gradually established his authority, so that in 1811 Lord Liverpool, the war minister, observed that Perceval's authority in the House now equalled that of Pitt. Perceval's use of sinecures and other patronage to secure loyalties meant that by May 1812, despite much public protest against his harsh policies, his political position had become unassailable. According to the humorist Sydney Smith, Perceval combined "the head of a country parson with the tongue of an Old Bailey lawyer".
Early in 1812 agitation for repeal of the Orders in Council increased. After riots in Manchester in April, Perceval consented to a House of Commons enquiry into the operation of the Orders; hearings began in May. Perceval was expected to attend the session on 11 May 1812; among the crowd in the lobby awaiting his arrival was a Liverpool merchant named John Bellingham.