Spencer Perceval

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I should like to know which sister he is descended from, because my understanding is that he had at least six sisters and at least six brothers. I should therefore explain that he was one of the many sons of the Earl of Egmont, so he was not entirely a commoner.

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, would my noble friend think of reminding Mr Henry Bellingham that he has already experienced the Perceval family’s taste for revenge, having been deprived of his Commons seat at the 1997 election by a direct descendant of the assassinated Prime Minister?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have to admit that that was not in my brief. Perhaps I might add that Spencer Perceval was, like Wilberforce, an evangelical, and having read a little about him, I have to say that he was something of a prig. Included within his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography is the fact that in 1800 he wrote a pamphlet on Biblical prophecy in which he referred to the French Revolution as,

“a divine instrument destined to destroy popish superstitions”,

and identified Napoleon Bonaparte as the woman in Revelation, chapter 17,

“who [sits] upon a … beast … the mother of harlots … drunken with the blood of the saints”.