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A case study of the Repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) under Peel and Wellington. They manipulated the issue dimensions, and got a measure passed in both houses that damaged the material interests of the median MP and peer.

This chapter discusses Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern Conservatism, and his role in nineteenth-century politics as the pioneer of ‘Gladstonian Liberalism’. One of the most fundamental assumptions underlying our understanding of nineteenth-century politics, although it has never been explicitly worked out, is that Peel remained a central presence in later Victorian England; in particular, that he was a decisive influence on W. E. Gladstone and on the Liberal Party he led between 1867 and 1894. Instead of being represented as a bilateral constitutional and party contest, nineteenth-century politics is more conveniently construed along the single axis supplied by ‘Peel-Gladstone’. But if Peel had become an anomaly in his own day, it is unlikely that he should have had any more relevance to succeeding generations, since they, like their predecessors, also believed in a party system as the best means of organizing public opinion in the country and of representing it in Parliament.

This chapter deals with the continuing hopes and frustrations that the established Churches of Britain faced from 1841 to 1846. Sir Robert Peel, who was appointed Prime Minister, believed that there were real abuses that needed reform within the established Churches. His appointment offered hope to the established Churches that they would be able to gain support from Parliament. However, Peel's appointment was accompanied by other problems, including a severe downturn in the economy that resulted from poor harvests. Because of these, Peel was pressured (to increase church accommodation and Parliament support to the established Churches) by not only the church leaders, but also the parliament. Everything led to the resignation of Peel as Prime Minister, the conversion to free trade, and disruption of the established Church of Scotland.

The transformations which took place in the urban environment during the Victorian period gave the public space of towns and cities new meanings, and Terry Wyke’s essay on Sir Robert Peel, examines how political lives and reputations were shaped by the commemorative culture of public portrait statues and busts. Peel's death in 1850 and his subsequent memorializatiom marked the start of a significant trend in public life, expressed in the commissioning of outdoor portrait statues to celebrate prominent local and national figures. Peel's image, 'forged' by the contemporary press, was absorbed by a broader Liberal bourgeois narrative in cities like Manchester, as a public statement of the reputation and achievements of the Anti-Corn Law League, with which Peel was so strongly associated. Such portraiture, replete with political symbolism, played an important part in defining a new civic landscape in the Victorian period, a material narrative of political life that had been largely forgotten by the second half of the twentieth century, although it remains a rich source of evidence deserving of greater attention.

This chapter discusses the struggles of the established churches outside Ireland. It explains that the recognition of the collapsed New Reformation in Ireland contributed to fundamental constitutional changes in the United Kingdom, in which a more democratic political order was born, one in which the conformity to one of the established Churches was no longer a requirement. The chapter also shows that the strong union of the Church and State seemed to be breaking up. The established Churches could no longer count on support from the Parliament, and would now need to seek cultural support. It also discusses the efforts of Sir Robert Peel (leader of Melbourne Government) to establish a new commission for the English Church reform, made up exclusively of clergymen and lay members of the Church of England.

This chapter describes how the young Queen Victoria was understandably perplexed about the American president's unique proposal. In only the fourth year of her glorious and lengthy reign, the relatively inexperienced and impressionable monarch confessed to having never heard of such a thing. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel shared Her Majesty's bewilderment at President John Tyler's amazing diplomatic gaffe. As he explained in late October 1841 to his twenty-two-year-old sovereign in the formal and deferential third person required when addressing the queen, “ Sir Robert Peel humbly assures your Majesty that he fully participates in the surprise which your Majesty so naturally expresses at the extraordinary intimation conveyed to Mr. Fox by the President of the United States.”

This chapter starts by addressing two of the fundamental issues – the principles of policing (including those attributed to Sir Robert Peel) and how to hold the police to account, underpinning both of which in the views of the authors are consent and public confidence in policing. It then looks at contemporary developments in accountability in Britain (such as the election of Police and Crime Commissioners and the disbandment of the former Police Authorities) and America, pointing up of some of the issues acknowledged by commentators. The chapter summarises the achievements of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, and briefly reprises the key findings in the earlier chapters in this regard. The book concludes with a tribute to the many who have helped contribute to the delivery of the new beginning of policing in Northern Ireland, paying particular tribute to the members and staff of the Policing Board.

On April 15, 1851, Archbishop Paul Cullen of Armagh wrote to Newman for his advice on the appointment of staff for the new Catholic University of Ireland, and also to ask if he “could spare time to give a few lectures on education”. Newman's initial response was non-committal. The origins of the new university started when Sir Robert Peel successfully moved his bill to establish a secular and non-denominational “Queen's University of Ireland”. This would provide an alternative to Anglican Trinity College in Dublin. Only a minority of the Irish bishops approved of the plan for such “mixed-education”. Rome forbade the Irish Church to pursue such a university and insisted on using Louvain in Belgium as the model for establishing a Catholic university. Newman, in turn, proposed that this would be the Catholic University of the English tongue.