On 11 May 1812, at about 5:15 pm, Spencer Perceval, the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a Liverpool merchant with a grievance against the government. Bellingham was detained; four days after the murder, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Newgate Prison on 18 May, one week after the assassination and one month before the start of the War of 1812. Perceval remains the sole British prime minister to have been assassinated.
Perceval had led the Tory government since 1809, during a critical phase of the Napoleonic Wars. His determination to prosecute the war using the harshest of measures caused widespread poverty and unrest on the home front; thus the news of his death was a cause of rejoicing in the worst-affected parts of the country. Despite initial fears that the assassination might be linked to a general uprising, it transpired that Bellingham had acted alone, protesting against the government's failure to compensate him for his treatment a few years previously when he had been imprisoned in Russia for a trading debt. Bellingham's lack of remorse, and apparent certainty that his action was justified, raised questions about his sanity, but at his trial he was judged to be legally responsible for his actions. After Perceval's death, Parliament made generous provision to his widow and children and approved the erection of monuments. Thereafter his ministry was soon forgotten, his policies reversed, and he is generally better known for the manner of his death than for any of his achievements. Later historians have characterised Bellingham's hasty trial and execution as contrary to the principles of justice. The possibility that he was acting within a conspiracy, on behalf of a consortium of Liverpool traders hostile to Perceval's economic policies, was the subject of a 2012 study.
Background
Biography
Spencer Perceval was born on 1 November 1762, the second son from the second marriage of John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont. He attended Harrow School and, in 1780, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a noted scholar and prizewinner. A deeply religious boy, he became closely aligned with evangelicalism at Cambridge and remained faithful all his life. Under the rule of primogeniture, Perceval had no realistic prospect of a family inheritance and needed to earn his living; on leaving Cambridge in 1783, he entered Lincoln's Inn to train as a lawyer. After being called to the bar in 1786, Perceval joined the Midland Circuit, where his family connections helped him to acquire a lucrative practice. In 1790 he married Jane Wilson. The marriage proved happy and prolific; twelve children (six sons and six daughters) were born over the following fourteen years.
Perceval's politics were highly conservative, and he acquired a reputation for his attacks on radicalism. As a junior prosecuting counsel in the trials of Thomas Paine and John Horne Tooke, he was noticed by senior politicians in the ruling Pitt ministry. In 1796, having refused the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, Perceval was elected to Parliament as the Tory member for Northampton, and won acclaim in 1798 with a speech defending William Pitt's government against attacks by the radicals Charles James Fox and Francis Burdett. He was generally seen as a rising star in his party; his short stature and slight build earned him the nickname "Little P".
Following Pitt's resignation in 1801, Perceval served as Solicitor General, and then as Attorney General, in the Addington ministry of 1801–1804, continuing in the latter office through the Pitt ministry of 1804–1806. His deep evangelical convictions led him to his unwavering opposition to the Roman Catholic Church and to Catholic emancipation, and his equally fervent support for the abolition of the slave trade, when he worked with fellow evangelicals such as William Wilberforce to secure the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.
When Pitt died in 1806 his government was succeeded by the cross-party "Ministry of All the Talents", under Lord Grenville. Perceval remained in opposition during this short-lived ministry, but when the Duke of Portland formed a new Tory administration in March 1807, Perceval took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Portland was elderly and ailing, and on his resignation in October 1809, Perceval succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury—the formal title by which prime ministers were then known—after a wounding internecine leadership struggle. In addition to his duties as head of the government he retained the Chancellorship, largely because he could find no minister of appropriate stature who would accept the office.
Troubled times
Perceval's government was weakened by the refusals to serve of former ministers such as George Canning and William Huskisson. It faced massive problems at a time of considerable industrial unrest and at a low point in the war against Napoleon. The unsuccessful Walcheren Campaign in the Netherlands was unravelling, and the army of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, was pinned down in Portugal. At the outset of his ministry Perceval enjoyed the strong support of King George III, but in October 1810 the king lapsed into insanity and was permanently incapacitated. Perceval's relationship with the Prince of Wales, who became prince regent, was initially far less cordial, but in the following months he and Perceval established a reasonable affinity, perhaps motivated in part by the prince's fear that the king might recover and find his favourite statesman deposed.
When the final British forces withdrew from Walcheren in February 1810, Wellington's force in Portugal was Britain's only military presence on the continent of Europe. Perceval insisted that it remain there, against the advice of most of his ministers and at great cost to the British exchequer. Ultimately this decision was vindicated, but for the time being his main weapon against Napoleon was the Orders in Council of 1807, inherited from the previous ministry. These had been issued as a tit-for-tat response to Napoleon's Continental System, a measure designed to destroy Britain's overseas trade. The Orders permitted the Royal Navy to detain any ship thought to be carrying goods to France or its continental allies. With both warring powers employing similar strategies, world trade shrank, leading to widespread hardship and dissatisfaction in key British industries, particularly textiles and cotton. There were frequent calls for modification or repeal of the Orders, which damaged relations with the United States to the point that, by early 1812, the two nations were on the brink of war. British manufacturers and merchants, many of whom faced bankruptcy, petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the Orders. Petitions from key industrial regions, including Yorkshire, Lancashire, Birmingham, and the Staffordshire Potteries, were supported by testimonies from over one hundred witnesses who detailed the economic devastation, poverty, and widespread distress caused by the restrictions on trade. Critics of the Orders argued that their repeal was essential to restoring American trade and alleviating domestic hardship.
At home, Perceval upheld his earlier reputation as scourge of radicals, imprisoning Burdett and William Cobbett, the latter of whom continued to attack the government from his prison cell. Perceval was also faced with the anti-machine protests known as "Luddism", to which he reacted by introducing a bill making machine-breaking a capital offence; in the House of Lords the youthful Lord Byron called the legislation "barbarous". Despite these difficulties Perceval gradually established his authority, so that in 1811 Lord Liverpool, the war minister, observed that Perceval's authority in the House now equalled that of Pitt. Perceval's use of sinecures and other patronage to secure loyalties meant that by May 1812, despite much public protest against his harsh policies, his political position had become unassailable. According to the humorist Sydney Smith, Perceval combined "the head of a country parson with the tongue of an Old Bailey lawyer".
Early in 1812 agitation for repeal of the Orders in Council increased. After riots in Manchester in April, Perceval consented to a House of Commons enquiry into the operation of the Orders; hearings began in May. Perceval was expected to attend the session on 11 May 1812; among the crowd in the lobby awaiting his arrival was a Liverpool merchant named John Bellingham.
John Bellingham
Early life
John Bellingham was born in about 1770, in the county of Huntingdonshire. His father, also named John, was a land agent and painted miniature portraits. His mother Elizabeth was from a well-to-do Huntingdonshire family. In 1779, John senior became mentally ill, and, after confinement in an asylum, died in 1780 or 1781. The family were then provided for by William Daw, Elizabeth's brother-in-law, a prosperous lawyer who arranged Bellingham's appointment as an officer cadet on board the East India Company's ship Hartwell. En route to India the ship mutinied, and was wrecked off the coast of the Cape Verde islands; Bellingham survived and returned home. Daw then helped him to set up in business as a tin plate manufacturer in London, but after a few years the business failed and Bellingham was declared bankrupt in 1794. Bellingham appears to have escaped debtors' prison, perhaps through the further intervention of Daw. Chastened by this experience, he decided to settle down and obtained a post as a book-keeper with a firm engaged in trade with Russia. Bellingham worked hard, and was sufficiently regarded by his employers to be appointed in 1800 as the firm's resident representative in Arkhangelsk, Russia. On his return home, he set up his own trading business and moved to Liverpool. In 1803, he married Mary Neville from Dublin.
In Russia
In 1804 Bellingham returned to Archangelsk to supervise a major commercial venture, accompanied by Mary and their infant son. His business completed, in November he prepared to return home, but was detained on account of a supposed unpaid debt. This arose from losses incurred by a business associate for which Bellingham was deemed liable. Bellingham denied any responsibility for the debt; his detention, he thought, was an act of revenge by powerful Russian merchants who—erroneously—thought that he had frustrated an insurance claim relating to a lost ship. Two arbitrators appointed by the governor of Archangelsk determined that he was responsible for a sum of 2,000 roubles (about £200), a fraction of the original amount claimed. Bellingham rejected this judgement.
With the issue still unresolved, Bellingham obtained passes for him and his family to travel to the Russian capital, St Petersburg. In February 1805, as they prepared to set out, Bellingham's pass was revoked; Mary and the child were permitted to proceed, but he was arrested and imprisoned in Archangelsk. When he sought help from Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, the British ambassador in St Petersburg, the matter was dealt with by the British consul, Sir Stephen Shairp, who informed Bellingham that as the dispute involved a civil debt, he could not interfere. Bellingham remained in custody in Archangelsk until November 1805, when a new city governor ordered his release and allowed him to join Mary in St Petersburg. Here, instead of arranging his family's swift return to England, Bellingham laid charges against the Archangelsk authorities for false imprisonment and demanded compensation. In doing so he outraged the Russian authorities, who in June 1806 ordered his imprisonment. According to his later account, Bellingham was "often marched publicly through the city with gangs of felons and criminals of the worse description [to the] heart-rending humiliation of himself".
Mary had meanwhile returned to England with her son (she was pregnant with her second child), eventually settling in Liverpool where she set up a millinery business with a friend, Mary Stevens. For the next three years Bellingham made constant demands for release and compensation, seeking help from Shairp, Leveson-Gower, and the latter's successor as ambassador, Lord Douglas. None were prepared to intercede on his behalf: "Thus", he later wrote when petitioning for redress, "without having offended any law, either civil or criminal, and without having injured any individual ... was your Petitioner bandied from one prison to another". Bellingham's position worsened in 1807 when Russia signed the Treaty of Tilsit and aligned itself with Napoleon. Two further years passed before, after a direct petition to Tsar Alexander, he was released and ordered to leave Russia. Bellingham arrived in England, uncompensated, in December 1809, determined to secure justice.
Seeking redress
On his return to England Bellingham spent six months in London, seeking compensation for the imprisonment and financial losses he had suffered in Russia. He considered the British authorities to be responsible through their neglect of his repeated requests for help. Successively he petitioned the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Privy Council, and Perceval himself; in each case his claims were politely rejected. Defeated and exhausted, in May 1811 Bellingham accepted his wife's ultimatum to abandon his campaign or otherwise lose her and his family. He joined her in Liverpool to begin life afresh.