Talk:Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Old talk page post
Salisbury was offered, but refused - possible on the grounds of the cost of maintaining that style, a dukedom by QV but I can't find a citation at the moment.Alci12 11:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * On 31st Jan 1886 he turned down a dukedom on the grounds of cost and refused another dukedom offer again in 1892. (Roberts, Salisbury, p. 374 + p. 579.)--Johnbull 12:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I have edited that in, if you have his biog perhaps you can add some flavour as iirc he was somewhat unusual spending much of his time even as PM testing chemicals and 'experimenting' which resulted in considerable damage to his home and not a little risk to his heath and safety.Alci12 14:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Infamous: Lord Salisbury said: "I think that the constant study of maps is apt to disturb men’s reasoning powers" -- comes exactly from one who divided Africa like a pizza and is responsible for the millions of deaths caused by wars, discrimination and conflict because he drew borders randomly. Harold Macmillan too. http://www.tothevictoriafalls.com/vfpages/devel/capetocairo.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.251.229.128 (talk) 05:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Spelling of Gascoyne
Could someone please confirm the spelling of Gascoyne? I think it should be Gascoigne (the name of a big family that the Cecil's married into). If correct the entire line of Salisbury Wikipedia entries may need to be changed.

(For interest, Salisbury Road intersects Gascoigne Street, in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.)

Can anyone explain to me the exact relationship between Brownlow Cecil (b.1725 d.1793, 9th Earl of Exeter) and Sir Robert Cecil (1st Earl of Salisbury)?

I also vaguely recall the Viscount Wimbledon title being associated with the Cecil family. However, I don’t see it mentioned anywhere. At the Wimbledon parish church I recall seeing a plaque dedicated to the marriage of Sir Christopher Wray, bt. (Lord Chief Justice of England, who sentenced Queen Mary of Scots to death) who married Albinia Cecil.

The Cecil family, I believe, is traceable to a famous Roman family of the same name. -  Eltharian Talk 10 September 2006
 * Name is correct see burkes or any other peerage source. The 1st earl of Salisbury and the 1st earl of Exeter were half-brothers. Alci12 15:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

House of Lords
Salisbury was not the last Prime Minister in the House of Lords. Please see the article on Alec Douglas-Home, who held the position of Prime Minister while sitting in the House of Lords for a short period in 1963. Flozu 13:05, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Estate
Can anyone explain the discrepancy that Salisbury was worth over six millon in 1900, but three years later his estate was valued at 310,000.Natalie West 19:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There are several fascinating points of connection between Salisbury, Cecil Rhodes, Lord Milner, and Arthur Balfour. Upon his death in 1902, but due to Rhodes' revision of his will in 1899 replacing W. T. Stead and Lord Rothschild with a group of seven including Milner and Rothschild's son-in-law, Rhodes' trust essentially passed to Milner's discretionary control to facilitate Rhodes-Milner Round Table objectives.  From Carroll Quigley's perspective, when Salisbury resigned as Prime Minister (also in 1902), and was subsequently succeeded by Balfour, the 'Cecil Bloc' was placed at Milner's prerogative.  Hmmm . . . £5.7 million, where oh where could it be?? - gospelnous 00:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I would suggest you look up his probate record or report of his will when it was probated (eg in the press). The lower figure may refer to "personal estate" (a figure that did not include "real estate" in the form of lands and houses owned). It was usual for wills then to be reported as a gross figure, followed by a "net personalty" figure which was the value of the personal estate, not including real estate, after deducting debts and funeral expenses.Cloptonson (talk) 20:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Attlee's opinion of Salisbury
That quote by Attlee is fascinating, and perhaps demands some elaboration, given the extent to which the ideology of the two differed. john k 16:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Beyond that, it'd be nice if we had a decent article. This article is about 1/8 as long as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry. john k 00:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Attlee (born 1880s) was a Tory as a young man, which explains it a little.--User:171.192.0.10


 * The full quote from Roberts' Salisbury is:


 * "Shortly before he died, Clement Attlee was invited to Chequers by Harold Wilson and asked whom he thought the best Prime Minister of his lifetime. Without hesitation Attlee replied 'Salisbury'."


 * Roberts gets this from Wilson's The Governance of Britain (1976), p. 31n.--Johnbull 15:14, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Disabilities - demonstration needed
I note he is listed in two categories, People with Prosopragnosia and Nobility with Disabilities, but these do not appear demonstrated in the article. I note in the article on Prosopragnosia he is listed as a sufferer.Cloptonson (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

1892 election
The lede carries more information about this election than the article does. Both the 1892 and the 1895 elections ought to be featured in more detail, as Salisbury was closely engaged in them. Valetude (talk) 00:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Reference problems
There are a host of references of the form "Roberts, p. 16." and the like. Unfortunately, there are at least four sources used by Roberts. There is "Andrew Roberts (2012). Salisbury: Victorian Titan. Faber & Faber", another edition of the same work (but the page numbers may differ) "Roberts, Andrew. Salisbury: Victorian Titan (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999)", "Martin Roberts (2001). Britain, 1846-1964: The Challenge of Change. Oxford UP", and "Roberts, Andrew. "Salisbury," History Today, (Oct 1999), Vol. 49 Issue 10.". This is clearly not acceptable. DuncanHill (talk) 13:18, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Excessive capitalization
There is a perfectly sensible Wikipedia guideline, MOS:JOBTITLES, that says common nouns should not be capitalized. This is based on virtually every style guide out there (University of Oxford Style Guide, AP Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, etc) and on academic usage. It is not true that "prime minister" is "standardly capitalized". Just look at the sources cited in this very article. It is not capitalized in Salisbury's biography at the official website of 10 Downing Street, nor is it capitalized in the 2001 biography by Michael Bentley, nor in the 1987 biography by Lord Blake, nor in the 2002 biography by Paul R. Brumpton, nor in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, nor in the 1964 biography by John Ashley Soames Grenville, nor in the 1978 biography by Peter T. Marsh, nor in the 1996 biography by Richard Shannon, nor in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, nor in the 2002 biography by E. David Steele, etc. So why should "prime minister" be capitalized? Which orthography book or style guide recommends that practice? Surtsicna (talk) 22:39, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Garbled sentence in '1890 Ultimatum on Portugal' section
Did some text get lost from this sentence during editing? "Trouble arose with Portugal, which had overextended itself in building a colonial empire in Africa it could ill afford. There was a clash of colonial visions between Portugal (the 'Pink Map', produced by the Lisbon Geographic Society after Alexandre de Serpa Pinto's, Hermenegildo Capelo's and Roberto Ivens's expeditions to Africa) and the British Empire (Cecil Rhodes's 'Cape to Cairo Railway') came after years of diplomatic conflict about several African territories with Portugal and other powers." 46.69.8.41 (talk) 10:56, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Unnecessary offensive language in Early History section?
At the end of paragraph 4 of the Early History section is the sentence, "He found the Kaffirs 'a fine set of men – whose language bears traces of a very high former civilisation', similar to Italian. They were 'an intellectual race, with great firmness and fixedness of will' but 'horribly immoral' as they lacked theism." "Kaffirs" is linked to an article declaring it to be (in this context) "pejorative" and "extremely offensive", and the word is on the official list []. Since it's not part of any of the relevant quotes, is it necessary to retain it at all? Many if not most readers will have to go to a dictionary, and will then find that it doesn't help them much. If Salisbury was referring to a specific group, the name of that group should go here; if not, then some broad and neutral term like "South African natives" or "local Africans". Scutigera (talk) 19:32, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I don’t see any harm in retaining his view of the native South Africans, as it’s not all pejorative and shows he was more open in his views than many at the time. If he actually referred to them as Kaffirs, perhaps explain that at the time, he wouldn’t have meant in an insulting way, patronising perhaps, but not insulting. Times, views and language change, but history remains the same. Colonialism was far from ideal, but it had both good and bad points, so we must portray it from a neutral standpoint, even if it makes us occasionally wince and shudder. Giano  (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * PS: I just looked for an alternative; however, to my ears, Coloureds sounds even worse. so perhaps ‘Native South Africans’ without a link is best. Giano  (talk) 20:19, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I concur that we should keep the word if he actually used it, but the format of the sentence implies that it's the author of the wiki page who used it, as the quotes from Salisbury appear later and don't contain the word. "Kaffir" in period text would naturally be interpreted according to that period's usage, but in the wiki page apart from quotes it's likely to be interpreted in its modern sense. "Native South Africans" seems perfectly acceptable. Scutigera (talk) 23:07, 2 August 2021 (UTC)