Cecil, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne, 3rd Marquis of Salisbury 1830-1903
English Conservative statesman and Nobel Prize winner

Born at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he was elected Conservative MP for Stamford (1853). In 1865 he became Viscount Cranborne and heir to the marquisate on the death of his elder brother. In the Derby ministry (1866), he became Secretary for India, but resigned, along with others, when Lord Derby and Disraeli introduced a reform bill. In 1868 he succeeded his father as 3rd Marquis of Salisbury. A strong opponent of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in 1870 he supported the Peace Preservation Bill, but disapproved the Irish Land Act. In 1874 he again became Secretary for India, but before the end of the year he had again come into collision with his chief on the Public Worship Regulation Act. In 1878 he succeeded Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary and accompanied Disraeli to the Berlin Congress. On the death of Disraeli (1881), he succeeded to the leadership of the Conservative Opposition and became Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1885. The contentious Irish Home Rule Bill defeated the Liberals, and Lord Salisbury, backed by Liberal Unionists, was Prime Minister again in 1886 and in 1895, when a succession of foreign complications brought the country several times to the verge of war. He resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1900 and, having remained at the head of the government during the Boer War (1889-1902), retired from public life in July 1902.