Viscount Lord Palmerston (Henry John Temple). British Prime Minister and Liberal politician.
1784 Born.
1807. Junior Lord of Admirality under Lord Portland. 1809 Secretary at War (till 1828). 1827 Elevated to cabinet under George Canning.
1828 Secretary at War under Duke of Wellington, resigns over Manchester/Brimingham parliamentary representation.
1830 Foreign Secretary under Earl Grey (till 1841).
1846-52 Foreign Secretary under Lord John Russell (till 1851 when he resigned, weeks later bringing down the Russell government).
1852 Home Secretary under Earl of Aberdeen (till Aberdeen's government is brought down by failure in the Crimea war).
1852 Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury.
1856 Peace in Crimea.
1857 Chinese policy crisis, Palmerston loses confidence of Commons but wins election.
1858 resigns over policy on revolutionarys harboured by Britain.
1859 Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury.
1865 Dies (in office).
Palmerston was an Irish Peer so always sat in the House of Commons. He is regarded as a nationalist and as a social conservative. He was a womaniser (The Times named him Lord Cupid, he was cited as correspondant in a divorce case in 1863 - he was 79) and a persistent abolitionist.
Palmerston was famous for a quip he once made about the seemingly intractable problem of Schleswig-Holstein. He claimed that only three people knew the solution: one was Prince Albert, who was dead; the second was a professor, who had gone insane; and the third was Palmerston himself, who had forgotten it.
'Though he made a joke when asked to do the right thing he always did it. He was so much more in earnest than he appeared, he did not do himself justice.' Florence Nightingale.