Prime Minister
F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich took which position from Aug 1827 to 1828?
F . J . Robinson , 1st Viscount Goderich Frederick John Robinson , 1st Earl of Ripon , ( 1 November 1782 – 28 January 1859 ) , styled The Honourable F . J . Robinson until 1827 and known between 1827 and 1833 as The Viscount Goderich ( pronounced ) , the name by which he is best known to history , was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1827 to 1828 . A member of the rural landowning aristocracy , Robinson entered politics through family connections . In the House of Commons he rose through junior ministerial ranks , achieving cabinet office in 1818 as President of the Board of Trade . In 1823 he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer , a post he held for four years . In 1827 he was raised to the peerage , and in the House of Lords was Leader of the House and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies . When the Prime Minister , George Canning , died in 1827 Goderich succeeded him , but was unable to hold together Cannings fragile coalition of moderate Tories and Whigs . He resigned after 144 days in office , the shortest in history for any British prime minister who did not die in office . After leaving the premiership Goderich served in the cabinets of two of his successors , the Earl Grey and Sir Robert Peel . Life and career . Early years . Robinson was born at Newby Hall , Yorkshire , the second son of Thomas Robinson , 2nd Baron Grantham by his wife Lady Mary Yorke , a daughter of Philip Yorke , 2nd Earl of Hardwicke . He was educated at a preparatory school at Sunbury-on-Thames , then attended Harrow School from 1796 to 1799 , followed by St Johns College , Cambridge from 1799 to 1802 . William Pitt the Younger was Member of Parliament for Cambridge University , to which , as The Times said , accordingly most of the budding Tory statesmen of the day resorted . Robinson was an accomplished classicist , winning Sir William Brownes Medal for the best Latin ode in 1801 . After graduating in 1802 he was admitted to Lincolns Inn . He remained a member there until 1809 , but did not pursue a legal career and was not called to the bar . Against the background of the Napoleonic Wars Robinson did part-time military service at home as Captain ( 1803 ) , ultimately Major ( 1814–1817 ) in the Northern Regiment of West Riding Yeomanry . First political appointments . Robinson entered politics through a family connection . His mothers cousin , the third Earl of Hardwicke , Lord Lieutenant of Ireland , appointed him as his private secretary in 1804 . Two years later Hardwicke secured for him the parliamentary seat of Carlow , a pocket borough near Dublin . In 1807 Robinson gave up the seat and was elected as MP for Ripon , close to his family home in Yorkshire . In his first years in Parliament Robinson declined offers of junior ministerial posts , out of deference to his patron Hardwicke , who was an opponent of the Prime Minister , the Duke of Portland . However , the Foreign Secretary , George Canning , chose him as the secretary of Lord Pembrokes mission to Vienna , aimed at securing a new treaty of alliance between Britain and Austria . The mission was unsuccessful , but Robinsons reputation was not damaged , and , as his biographer E Royston Pike puts it , as a good Tory [ he was ] given several small appointments in successive ministries . His political thinking was greatly influenced by Canning , but he became the protégé of Cannings rival Lord Castlereagh , who appointed him his under-secretary at the War Office in May 1809 . When Castlereagh resigned from the government in October , unwilling to serve under the new Prime Minister , Spencer Perceval , Robinson resigned with him . In June 1810 he accepted office as a member of the Admiralty board . At the time of Percevals assassination early in 1812 , he was absent from parliament ostensibly on militia duties in Yorkshire . He was made a Privy Counsellor in August 1812 , In 1814 Robinson married Lady Sarah Albinia Louisa Hobart ( 1793–1867 ) , daughter of the 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire , and first cousin to Castlereaghs wife . There were three children of the marriage , only one of whom survived to adulthood : - Hobart Frederick Robinson ( September 1816 ) - Eleanor Henrietta Robinson ( 31 October 1826 ) - George Frederick Samuel Robinson , 1st Marquess of Ripon ( 24 October 1827 – 9 July 1909 ) Robinson served under Lord Liverpool as Vice-President of the Board of Trade between 1812 and 1818 , and as joint-Paymaster of the Forces between 1813 and 1817 , from which position he sponsored the Corn Laws of 1815 . Robinsons Corn Importation Bill , successfully presented to Parliament in February 1815 , was a protectionist measure , imposing minimum prices for imported wheat and other grains . The historian Gregor Dallas writes : The Corn Laws made the price of wheat artificially high , to the benefit of the landed classes and the detriment of the working classes . While the Bill was going through Parliament Robinsons London house in Old Burlington Street was frequently attacked by angry citizens ; in one such attack the railings outside the house were ripped out , the front door smashed open , paintings ripped , and furniture thrown out of the window . In another attack two people were shot , one of them fatally . Describing the incident to the House of Commons Robinson was moved to tears , showing , as the biographer P J Jupp put it , a propensity under stress which was to earn him the first of several nicknames , in this case the Blubberer . Cabinet minister . In 1818 Robinson entered the cabinet as President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy , under the premiership of Lord Liverpool . In 1823 he succeeded Nicholas Vansittart as Chancellor of the Exchequer . The historian Richard Helmstadter writes : Robinson served as Chancellor for four years , and was regarded as a success in the post . The public finances were in good order , with a revenue surplus for the first three years of his chancellorship . He cut taxes and made grants to house the Royal Library in the British Museum and to buy the Angerstein collection for the National Gallery . Jupp writes , These achievements , together with his support for Catholic relief and the abolition of slavery , led to his being regarded as one of the most liberal members of the government and to two more nicknames – Prosperity Robinson and Goody . Robinsons last year at the Treasury was overshadowed by a run on the banks , caused by the collapse of the City of London bankers Pole Thornton and Co . Robinson was not blamed for the collapse , but his measures to mitigate the crisis were widely seen as half-hearted . Under strain from the financial crisis , Robinson asked Liverpool for a change of post . In January 1827 he was given a peerage as Viscount Goderich , but Liverpool had no time to reshuffle his cabinet , being taken ill in February 1827 and resigning the premiership . He was succeeded by Canning , whose appointment caused a major realignment in the political factions of the day . The Tories split into four groups , distinguished by their view of Catholic Emancipation . Canning and his followers were liberal on the matter ; Robinson belonged to a moderate group that was willing to support Canning ; the faction led by the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel opposed emancipation ; and an ultra-Tory group resisted any kind of liberalising measure . To the anger of the King , George IV , who regarded it as a betrayal , Wellington and Peel refused to serve under Canning . With half the Tories ranged against him , Canning was obliged to seek support from the Whigs . Goderich , appointed by Canning as Leader of the House of Lords as well as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies , found the upper house no less stressful than the Commons . He was the target for the anger of the anti-Canning Tories in the Lords , suffering many personal verbal assaults ; when he attempted to get a new Corn Law enacted it was defeated by an alliance of peers led by Wellington . Prime Minister . Cannings health had been declining since the beginning of 1827 , and on 8 August he died . A prominent Whig commented , God has declared against us . He is manifestly for the tories , and I fear the king also , which is much worse . The King , however , though he had long inclined to favour Tories over Whigs , was still angry at the refusal of Wellington and Peel to serve in Cannings cabinet . A widespread expectation ( possibly shared by Wellington himself ) that the King would send for Wellington was confounded . On the day of Cannings death Goderich and the Home Secretary , William Sturges Bourne , were summoned to Windsor Castle , where the King announced his intention of appointing Goderich to the premiership . Goderich immediately encountered difficulty in balancing the conflicting demands of the King and the Whigs about the composition of his cabinet . George considered that the three ministerial posts held by Whigs were quite enough ; the Whigs pressed hard for the inclusion of a fourth , Lord Holland , as Foreign Secretary . Goderich satisfied nobody with his inability to resolve matters . A leading Whig , George Tierney , spoke of his partys dissatisfaction with Goderich : [ T ] hey think Goderich has behaved so ill in this affair that they can have no confidence in him . They believe so much in the integrity of his character that they do not suspect him of any duplicity in what has passed , but his conduct has been marked by such deplorable weakness as shows how unfit he is for the situation he occupies . There was further discontent in the coalition cabinet at Goderichs vacillation over the appointment of a Chancellor of the Exchequer , once again caught between the demands of the King and those of his Whig allies . Within a month , William Huskisson , a Tory colleague , was writing of Goderich : The king has taken the exact measure of him , and openly says he must do all the duties of a premier himself , because Goderich has no nerves ! I am using nearly his own words ; and he has been acting , and still talks of acting up to this declaration . Georges contempt for his Prime Minister was confirmed in his description of Goderich as a damned , snivelling , blubbering blockhead . In addition to the conflicting pressures from the King and the Whigs , Goderich had to cope with the mental problems from which his wife was suffering . In December Huskisson wrote : Wellington was by now distancing himself from the ultra-Tory wing of his party , and by January 1828 the King had concluded that the coalition could not continue and that a Tory ministry under Wellington would be preferable . Goderich had already written a letter of resignation to the King , but had not yet sent it , when he was summoned to Windsor . He described the disintegrating state of his administration ; the King asked him to send for the Lord Chancellor , who was in turn bidden to summon Wellington to receive the Kings commission to form a government . According to one account , Goderich was in tears during his interview with the King , who passed him a handkerchief , but within days Goderich was rejoicing in his release from office : quite another man [ who ] sleeps at nights now , and laughs and talks as usual . His premiership had lasted 144 days , which was then , and remains , the second shortest in British history , three days longer than that of his immediate predecessor , Canning . Goderich is the man with the hat in the painting The Staircase of the London Residence of the Painter by the Dutch painter Pieter Christoffel Wonder . In 2014 a Dutch art student did research on the painting and discovered that it depicts the resignation of Prime Minister Frederick John Robinson in January 1828 . The research can be found on the Academia.edu website . Later cabinet posts . In 1830 Goderich moved over to the Whigs and joined Lord Greys cabinet , as Colonial Secretary . Both on moral and on economic grounds he was strongly opposed to slavery throughout his career , and he worked hard in the 1830s for the emancipation of slaves throughout the British Empire . His work was continued by his successor as Colonial Secretary , Lord Stanley , whose abolitionist legislation Goderich piloted through the House of Lords . In 1833 Goderich was created Earl of Ripon . He had not sought the advancement in the peerage , but wished to accept the Kings offer of the Garter , for which , at that time , a viscountcy was considered an insufficient rank . He left the Colonial Office in the same year , and did not wish to hold any further office , but Grey insisted on his taking the senior non-departmental post of Lord Privy Seal . However , the next year Goderich and Stanley broke with the Whigs over what they saw as a threat to the established status of the Church of Ireland . From 1841 to 1843 Ripon served in Peels second administration as President of the Board of Trade , with the young W . E . Gladstone as his deputy . His final ministerial post was President of the Board of Control from 1843 to 1846 . During his career , as Helmstadter observes , he had been , in succession , a Pittite , a Tory , a Canningite , a Whig , a Stanleyite , a Conservative , and a Peelite . Between 1818 and 1846 he was a member of every government except Wellingtons and Melbournes . Apart from his political career Goderich served as president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1830 to 1833 , and of the Royal Society of Literature from 1834 to 1845 . Ripon died at Putney Heath , London , in January 1859 , aged 76 . He was succeeded by his only son , George who became a noted Liberal statesman and cabinet minister and was created Marquess of Ripon . The son was unique in being conceived at No 11 Downing Street , while Robinson was Chancellor of the Exchequer , and being born at No 10 , when his father , now Goderich , was Prime Minister . Goderichs government , September 1827 – January 1828 . - Lord Goderich – First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords - Lord Lyndhurst – Lord Chancellor - The Duke of Portland – Lord President of the Council - The Earl of Carlisle – Lord Privy Seal - The Marquess of Lansdowne – Secretary of State for the Home Department - The Earl of Dudley – Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs - William Huskisson – Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and Leader of the House of Commons - J . C . Herries – Chancellor of the Exchequer - The Marquess of Anglesey – Master-General of the Ordnance - Charles Grant – President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy - Charles Williams-Wynn – President of the Board of Control - William Sturges Bourne – First Commissioner of Woods and Forests - Lord Bexley – Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - Viscount Palmerston – Secretary at War Notes and references . - Notes - References External links . - More about Frederick Robinson , Viscount Goderich on the 10 Downing Street website . - Paper by M . Oderwald : The stairecase of the Londen residence of the painter .