Robert Jenkinson (7 June 1770 – 4 December 1828), also known as Lord Liverpool, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 8 June 1812 to 9 April 1827, succeeding Spencer Perceval and preceding George Canning. He held a reactionary Tory Party cabinet that initially opposed demands for reform and sought to repress expressions of discontent, and he presided over years of oppression following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Biography[]
Robert Jenkinson was born in London, England on 7 June 1770, the son of President of the Board of Trade Charles Jenkinson, and he graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1790. That same year, he was elected to the House of Commons for Rye, and he was MP for Rye until 1803. Jenkinson rose to power within the Tory Party due to his opposition to William Wilberforce's reforms and his support for slavery, and he served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1801 to 1804, leader of the House of Lords from 1803 to 1806 and again from 1807 to 1827, Home Secretary from 1804 to 1806 and again from 1807 to 1809, and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from 1809 to 1812. Jenkinson was elected Prime Minister in 1812, and he led the United Kingdom into war with the United States in the War of 1812 and continued to lead the British war effort against Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1815, Jenkinson oversaw the dissolution of the First French Empire at the Congress of Vienna and passed the Corn Laws, and he called for repressive measures at the domestic level to maintain order in postwar Britain. Radicalism grew in Britain, with the masses calling for parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws; eleven people were killed by the British Army at the Peterloo massacre of August 1819, leading to Jenkinson passing the repressive Six Acts. In 1820, he also put down the Cato Street Conspiracy and executed four of its leaders. During the 1820s, he found that the Tory Party's younger leaders began to push for a program of moderate reform, and the Tory Party began to crumble. He died in 1828, a year after leaving the prime ministership.