Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

LORD RANDOLPH HENRY SPENCER CHURCHILL.

This picture was published C1900.

CHURCHILL, Lord Randolph (1849-1894), 3rd son of the 6th Duke of Marlborough (and incidentally grandson of that Lord Londonderry whose statue dominates Durham market-place). Entering Parliament for the family seat of Woodstock in 1874, he became a critic of what he saw as the lethargic performance of the Conservative leadership of Sir Stafford NORTHCOTE. With John GORST and others they became known as the 'Fourth Party'. An advocate of popular Toryism, he with Gorst was an advocate for e.g. the Primrose League, and became leader of the National Union of Conservative Associations, insisting to SALISBURY that it must ultimately supercede as director of the party's affairs. An advocate of extending the 1884 franchise to Ireland (where he spent some time), he successfully negotiated with PARNELL in 1885, persuading the latter to put Irish support behind the Tories, but when GLADSTONE announced his conversion to Home Rule, he decided to play 'the Orange card', and famously and ominously declared that "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right". Chancellor of the Exchequer 1886, but Salisbury called his bluff when he offered his resignation, and he never held office again. The Dictionary of National Biography politely notes that he died of "general paralysis"; but his best modern biographer, R.F.Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life [Oxford, 1981], suggests that Churchill's terminal syphilis made him a driven man.

History Page.