Lord Randolph (Henry Spencer) Churchill - Early life, The "Fourth Party", Tory democracy, Office, Eclipse

British statesman, born in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, SC England, UK, the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and the father of Winston Churchill. He studied at Oxford, entered parliament in 1874, and became conspicuous in 1880 as the leader of a guerrilla band of Conservatives known as the ‘Fourth Party’. He was secretary for India (1885–6), and for a short while Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. He resigned after his first budget proved unacceptable, and thereafter devoted little time to politics.

Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) was a British statesman.

Lord Randolph was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and Frances, daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry.

Early life

He was born at 3 Wilton Terrace, Belgravia, London. In 1874 he was elected to Parliament as Conservative member for Woodstock, defeating George Brodrick, a fellow, and afterwards warden, of Merton College.

Influential marriage

Lord Randolph Churchill married on 15 April 1874 the beautiful Jennie Jerome, daughter of Leonard Jerome, of New York in the United States, by whom he had two sons, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874 – 1965) and John Strange Churchill (1880 – 1947). Jennie Jerome's social contacts greatly helped advance Lord Randolph's early career.

It has been long rumored that their second son, John, was not fathered by Lord Randolph, but instead was possibly the son of an Irish nobleman, Col. Lord Randolph did quarrel for a time with Edward VII, during the latter's affair with Jennie Jerome. However, they later mended their friendship, which would remain close until Lord Randolph's death (see ).

The "Fourth Party"

It was not until 1878 that he came to public notice as the exponent of a species of independent Conservatism. George Sclater-Booth (afterwards 1st Baron Basing), President of the Local Government Board, was a specific target, and the minister's County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the "crowning dishonour to Tory principles", and the "supreme violation of political honesty". Lord Randolph's attitude, and the vituperative fluency of his invective, made him a parliamentary figure of some importance before the dissolution of the 1874 parliament, though he was not yet taken quite seriously.

In the new parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more notable role. Along with Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, Sir John Gorst and occasionally Arthur Balfour, he made himself known as the audacious opponent of the Liberal administration and the unsparing critic of the Conservative front bench. Churchill roused the Conservatives by leading resistance to Charles Bradlaugh, the member for Northampton, who, though an avowed atheist or agnostic, was prepared to take the parliamentary oath. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Conservative leader in the Lower House, was forced to take a strong line on this difficult question by the energy of the fourth party. The long controversy over Bradlaugh's seat, showed that Lord Randolph Churchill was a parliamentary champion who added to his audacity much tactical skill and shrewdness. He continued to play a conspicuous part throughout the parliament of 1880 – 1885, targeting William Ewart Gladstone as well as the Conservative front bench, some of whose members, particularly Sir Richard Cross and William Henry Smith, he singled out for attack.

From the beginning of the Egyptian imbroglio Lord Randolph was emphatically opposed to almost every step taken by the government.

Tory democracy

By 1885 he had formulated the policy of progressive Conservatism which was known as "Tory democracy". His views were largely accepted by the official Conservative leaders in the treatment of the Gladstonian Franchise Bill of 1884. Lord Randolph insisted that the principle of the bill should be accepted by the opposition, and that resistance should be focused on the refusal of the government to combine with it a scheme of redistribution. The prominent, and on the whole judicious and successful, part he played in the debates on these questions, still further increased his influence with the rank and file of the Conservatives in the constituencies.

At the same time he was actively spreading the gospel of democratic Toryism in a series of platform campaigns. In 1883 and 1884 he invaded the Radical stronghold of Birmingham, and in the latter year took part in a Conservative garden party at Aston Manor, at which his opponents paid him the compliment of raising a serious riot.

Office

In 1884 progressive Toryism won out. At the conference of the Central Union of Conservative Associations, Lord Randolph was nominated chairman, despite the opposition of the parliamentary leaders. A split was averted by Lord Randolph's voluntary resignation; and when Hugh Childers's budget resolutions were defeated by the Conservatives, aided by about half the Parnellites, Lord Randolph Churchill's admirers were justified in proclaiming him to have been the "organizer of victory". and in Lord Salisbury's cabinet of 1885 he was made Secretary of State for India. As the price of entry he demanded that Sir Stafford Northcote be removed from the Commons, despite being the Conservative leader there. Salisbury was more than willing to concede this and Northcote went to the Lords as the Earl of Iddlesleigh.

In the autumn election of 1885 he contested Central Birmingham against John Bright, and though defeated here, was at the same time returned by a very large majority for South Paddington. In the contest which arose over Gladstone's Home Rule bill, Lord Randolph again bore a conspicuous part, and in the electioneering campaign his activity was only second to that of some of the Liberal Unionists, Lord Hartington, George Goschen and Joseph Chamberlain. He was now the recognized Conservative champion in the Lower Chamber, and when the second Salisbury administration was formed after the general election of 1886 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.

Eclipse

His management of the House was on the whole successful, and was marked by tact, discretion and temper. but the only ostensible cause was that put forward in his letter to Lord Salisbury, which was read in the House of Commons on 27 January. The cabinet was reconstructed with Goschen as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Lord Randolph had "forgotten Goschen", as he is said to have remarked). For the next few years there was some speculation about a return to frontline politics, as often happens when a Cabinet minister resigns, but Churchill's own career as a Conservative chief was over.

Although he continued to sit in Parliament, his health was in serious decline throughout the 1890s.

During this time he coined the phrase "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right". Lord Randolph started in the autumn of 1894, accompanied by his wife, but his illness made so much progress that he was brought back hurriedly from Cairo.

His widow, Lady Randolph Churchill, married George Cornwallis-West in 1900, yet retained her noble prerogative earned through her marriage to Lord Randolph.