Early premiership of Lord Liverpool 1812-15 : palma non sine pulvere

Abstract

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool KG (1770-1828), was First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister for almost fifteen years in the early nineteenth century. He survived in the premiership for longer than all but two of his predecessors and longer than all of his successors, at least so far. Liverpool is, however, one the most overlooked and underestimated of Prime Ministers. Norman Gash's book is the first and so far only modem biography of Liverpool. This study, however, is less than three hundred pages in length, is based on only seven of the hundreds of volumes of the Liverpool Papers in the custody of the British Library and is far from exhaustive in its use of printed sources. There is evidently considerable scope and need for further research on the subject of Liverpool's life and career especially during the period of his premiership and based on a trawl through all the manuscript sources now available. This doctoral dissertation seeks to examine Liverpool during his early premiership between 1812 and 1815, one of the least studied but most significant periods of both Liverpool's life and career, and his administration, from the point Liverpool succeeded to the highest office to the resettlement of Europe after the long war with France. The opening section aims to place Liverpool in his historical context. There is a particular emphasis here on an analysis of the political system that Liverpool was required to master. Liverpool's early life and career before he rose to the premiership is the focus of the next section. The main body of the thesis is divided into two parts. One part examines Liverpool during his early premiership in a mainly chronological style and is concerned almost entirely with the issues of war and peace, and the other part seeks to examine a number of major themes that are most satisfactorily looked at in isolation from the main narrative. For example, one chapter covers the premier's relationship with the monarchy.