Palmerston was shot at the War Office, then paid for his attacker's defence
In 1818 a mentally ill former lieutenant with a pension grievance fired at Lord Palmerston on the War Office stairs. The bullet only grazed him. Learning of the man's illness, Palmerston paid for his legal defence. He went on to dominate British foreign policy for 35 years and died in office at 80.
Henry John Temple was born in Westminster on 20 October 1784 into the Irish branch of the Temple family, though he seldom visited Ireland. A childhood tour of the Continent left him fluent in Italian. At Harrow schoolmates remembered him standing up to bigger bullies; at Edinburgh he studied political economy under Dugald Stewart, a friend of Adam Smith, and credited those years with most of his useful habits of mind. He inherited his father's Irish title in 1802, before he turned 18. Because it was an Irish peerage it gave him no seat in the Lords, which kept him in the Commons.
His start in politics was bumpy. He lost at Cambridge in 1806, was unseated from Horsham, then lost Cambridge again by three votes after urging supporters to back a fellow Tory. A pocket borough on the Isle of Wight finally put him in Parliament in 1807. A speech defending the British bombardment of Copenhagen, justified as self-preservation against Napoleon's designs on the Danish fleet, impressed Spencer Perceval so much that he offered Palmerston the Treasury. Palmerston chose instead to be Secretary at War, running army finances for almost 20 years.
He drifted from the Tories toward the Whigs. He backed Catholic emancipation in 1828 and parliamentary reform, and left office that year alongside Huskisson in a dispute with Wellington. Foreign affairs became his domain: he was Foreign Secretary across three spells between 1830 and 1851 and an unpolished but effective speaker who judged the mood of the House well. When Aberdeen's coalition collapsed over the Crimean War in 1855, he alone could command a majority.
As prime minister from 1855 to 1858 and 1859 to 1865 he became the first Liberal to hold the post and is often called the first truly popular one. Queen Victoria and many politicians distrusted him, but the press and public adored his assertive nationalism. Historians rank him among the greatest foreign secretaries, yet his sponsorship of the Opium Wars was denounced at the time, and the imperial record has been reassessed since. No British prime minister since has died in office.
Source: Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
