Spencer Walpole is famous as the home secretary at the time of the parliamentary reform agitation in 1866 and 1867; he was involved in the attempt to deny the reform agitators the right of meeting in Hyde Park. These events eventually brought the political career of this three-time home secretary to an ignominious end.
Background
Walpole was born in 11 September 1806, the second son of Thomas Walpole and his wife, Margaret, the youngest daughter of John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont. His great-grandfather was Horatio Walpole, and his maternal grandfather was Spencer Perceval, the prime minister.
Education
Walpole was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then went into law, being called to the bar at Lincolns Inn Field in 1831.
In 1846 he became Queens Counsel. He continued with his legal career until 1852, but his attention was increasingly absorbed by politics.
Career
Walpole became M.P. for Midhurst in 1846—where his cousin the third Earl of Egmont exercised political influence—and held that seat until 1856, when he became M.P. for Cambridge, which he represented until 1882. He quickly earned a reputation as a good speaker.
In February 1852, he was appointed home secretary in Lord Derby’s Conservative ministry. This was a brief period of office, ending in December 1852, but he managed to initiate a reform of the militia. He became home secretary again when the fourteenth Earl of Derby formed a government in February 1858, but resigned in early 1859 in opposition to the Derby cabinets decision to support the introduction of a parliamentary reform bill.
He accepted yet a third appointment as home secretary, in Lord Derby’s third ministry in June 1866, and was immediately faced by a problem: the National Reform League was organizing a march to, and a meeting in, Hyde Park on 23 July 1866.
He remained a member of the cabinet until Benjamin Disraeli restructured it in February 1868. That was the end of Walpole’s career at the top of British politics, although he continued as an M.P. until 1882 and filled many public posts. He died on 22 May 1898.
Connections
He married his first cousin Isabella, fourth daughter of Spencer Perceval, on 6 October 1835.