Robert Peel

Robert Peel was a British statesman who twice served as prime minister and helped create modern Conservative politics. He established the Metropolitan Police, reformed criminal law and repealed the Corn Laws, splitting his party over free trade.

Robert Peel also held the offices or ranks of baronet, Peel baronets, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Leader of the Opposition. Robert Peel was born in Ramsbottom and died in Westminster.

Antonia Fraser’s The King and the Catholics gives Robert Peel a central political role in the crisis that produced Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Peel begins as a prominent defender of the Protestant constitution but, with Wellington, concludes that continued resistance to Daniel O’Connell’s movement risks greater instability and helps carry emancipation through Parliament despite George IV’s hostility. Peter Ackroyd’s Dominion places Peel within the broader transformation of nineteenth-century Britain, where his police and criminal-law reforms, premierships and eventual repeal of the Corn Laws belong to the transition from late Georgian politics to the Victorian state.