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Between 1868 and 1886, Queen Victoria only had two Prime Minsters. They were very different men from different parties and one she is said to have liked and one she didn't. The two men were William Ewart Gladstone, who gave his name to a bag, and Benjamin Disraeli, who didn't. Gladstone was a Liberal or Whig and Disraeli was a Tory.
Let's look at Disraeli first as he became Prime Minster first, but not for long. He was more successful in his second series. He was also a bit of a novelist, though this got him into trouble once. He wrote a novel anonymously about a business partner but when he was revealed as the writer the stress caused him to have a nervous breakdown.
He entered Parliament in 1837 as a supporter of Sir Robert Peel but, when Sir Robert failed to repeal the corn laws, Disreali verbally attacked him and caused Peel to resign. It is said he did this because Peel hadn't offered him a job in the cabinet.
In 1852 he was offered the job of Chancellor by the Prime Minister Lord Derby but his first budget was viciously attack by Gladstone and he resigned after 11 months in the job. He popped back a few times as Chancellor, never for very long, but when Lord Derby resigned, Victoria asked Disraeli to be PM. He took office in February 1868 and then lost the election in December of the same year.
He then spent time as leader of the opposition until he became PM again in 1874 and remained there till 1880. He began a lot of reforms to improve education for children and the lives of working people. He died in 1881, a year after losing another election.
His friendship with Victoria may have been partly because he liked to flatter her. It was Disraeli who agreed to let the Queen be known as Empress of India in 1876. He once was asked by a colleague how to work with the Queen and he replied “first of all, remember she is a woman”, which would, I think, today be seen as a rather sexist, though completely obvious, remark.
Gladstone, on the other hand, was not much liked by the Queen who described him as a “half-mad firebrand”. He was PM four times in 26 years, for a total period of over 12 years.
He became a Tory MP in 1832 aged 23. When the Tory party split in 1846, Gladstone followed Peel in becoming a Liberal-Conservative, believing strongly in free trade. In 1867, he became leader of the Liberal party and became Prime Minister for the first time the following year.
After losing the 1874 election to Disraeli, Gladstone retired as leader of the Liberal Party. In 1880 he became PM again although Victoria didn't really want him but by now the monarch had very little say. She once complained that he “addresses me as though I were a public meeting”. He lasted till 1885, popped back for a few months in 1886 and returned for the fourth and final time, aged 83, in 1892. He resigned in 1894 and died four years later.
It was during Gladstone's first time as PM, on 26 May 1868, that the last public execution took place in England. Michael Barrett, aged 27, was publicly hanged outside Newgate Prison for his part in an explosion which killed 12 bystanders when he was trying to release a friend by blowing a hole in Clerkenwell prison wall. Barrett was part of an Irish group who were opposed to being ruled from London. A crowd of 2,000 watched the hanging and booed and jeered and sang “Rule Britannia” as the body dropped.
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