Assassination of Spencer Perceval (1812): A Prime Minister Shot

The assassination of Spencer Perceval on 11 May 1812 is the only killing of a serving British prime minister. Perceval was shot at close range in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a Liverpool merchant’s agent with a long-running grievance against the government. The murder shocked Britain at a time of war, economic distress and popular unrest, and it was followed by one of the fastest trials and executions in English legal history.

Background: Perceval and a troubled country

Spencer Perceval was born in London on 1 November 1762, a younger son of John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont. A barrister by training, he entered Parliament in 1796 and served as Solicitor General, Attorney General and Chancellor of the Exchequer before becoming prime minister in October 1809. He was a Tory, a devout evangelical Anglican and the father of a large family with his wife Jane.

His government faced severe difficulties. Britain was at war with Napoleonic France, and both sides were waging economic warfare. British Orders in Council restricted neutral trade with France and its allies, which hurt manufacturers and angered the United States. In 1811 and 1812 the Luddite disturbances, in which textile workers broke machinery, spread across parts of the Midlands and the North. Many contemporaries feared revolution.

John Bellingham’s grievance

John Bellingham was born around 1770 and worked as an agent and broker in the timber and shipping trade. In 1804, while on business in the Russian port of Archangel, he became caught up in a dispute over a lost ship and its insurance and was accused of debt. He was imprisoned or kept under restraint in Russia for most of the following five years.

Bellingham felt that the British ambassador and consul had failed to help him. After returning to England in 1809 he settled in Liverpool and repeatedly petitioned the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Privy Council and the Prince Regent for compensation. Every request was rejected. By early 1812 he had concluded that only a dramatic act would bring his case before the public.

In the weeks before the shooting Bellingham bought a pair of pistols in London and had a tailor add a concealed inside pocket to his coat. He was a familiar figure around Westminster, where he had often watched debates.

The shooting in the lobby

On the evening of Monday 11 May 1812 the House of Commons was sitting to hear evidence about the Orders in Council. Perceval arrived late and walked through the lobby towards the chamber at about a quarter past five. Bellingham, who had been waiting near the doors, stepped forward and fired a single shot into his chest.

Perceval staggered a few steps, cried out and collapsed. He was carried into a nearby room and died within minutes, aged 49. Bellingham did not try to escape. He sat down on a bench, admitted that he was the man who had fired and was seized and searched; the second loaded pistol was found on him.

News spread quickly. While MPs were horrified, crowds outside Parliament and in some industrial towns reportedly greeted the news with cheers, a sign of how unpopular the government had become among parts of the population.

Trial and execution

Bellingham was charged with murder and tried at the Old Bailey on Friday 15 May, only four days after the shooting. His counsel, Peter Alley, asked for a postponement so that witnesses could be brought from Liverpool to testify to his client’s insanity. The request was refused.

In court Bellingham spoke at length about his treatment in Russia and by British officials. He insisted that he had acted from a sense of justice and expressed regret that Perceval rather than the ambassador he blamed had been his victim. The jury took a short time to find him guilty, and he was sentenced to death. He was hanged outside Newgate Prison on Monday 18 May 1812, a week after the shooting.

The speed of the proceedings was criticised even at the time. Some lawyers and later historians have argued that Bellingham’s mental state deserved fuller examination, although the law of the period set a very narrow test for insanity.

Key people

• Spencer Perceval (1762–1812), prime minister from 1809, known for his integrity and his firm opposition to Catholic emancipation.
• John Bellingham (c. 1770–1812), the assassin, a commercial agent whose grievance went back to his detention in Russia.
• Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, Perceval’s successor, who became prime minister in June 1812.
• Jane Perceval, the prime minister’s widow, left with a large family of young children.

Consequences

Perceval’s death left a political vacuum. After weeks of negotiations the Prince Regent appointed Lord Liverpool, who took office on 8 June 1812 and remained prime minister until 1827. Parliament voted a substantial grant and annuity to Perceval’s widow and children.

Within weeks the government withdrew the Orders in Council in June 1812, but the news reached America too late: the United States had already declared war on Britain on 18 June, beginning the War of 1812. Historians debate how far Perceval’s death changed this outcome, since pressure to repeal the Orders had been growing for months.

Security at Westminster was not transformed overnight, but the murder became a reference point whenever the safety of ministers and MPs was discussed.

Legacy

Perceval was buried at St Luke’s Church in Charlton, then in Kent. A monument by Richard Westmacott was later placed in Westminster Abbey, showing the dead prime minister mourned by allegorical figures. He is often remembered less for his policies than for the manner of his death, though recent biographers have also stressed his administrative skill in keeping Britain’s war effort going, including support for the Peninsular War.

Timeline

• 1762, 1 November: Spencer Perceval is born in London.
• 1804: John Bellingham is detained in Russia after a commercial dispute.
• 1809: Bellingham returns to England; in October Perceval becomes prime minister.
• 1812, 11 May: Bellingham shoots Perceval in the lobby of the House of Commons.
• 1812, 15 May: Bellingham is tried and convicted at the Old Bailey.
• 1812, 18 May: Bellingham is hanged outside Newgate Prison.
• 1812, 8 June: Lord Liverpool becomes prime minister.
• 1812, 23 June: The government revokes the Orders in Council.

Why it matters

The murder of Spencer Perceval remains unique in British history as the assassination of a sitting prime minister. It exposed the anger and distress of a country strained by long war, raised lasting questions about justice and insanity in English law, and brought to power Lord Liverpool, whose government would see Britain through the final defeat of Napoleon.