Free For Honour's Sake by Mark Zuehlke

election to the House of Commons. “Opportunities for usefulness which were open to a politician seemed unlimited,” he wrote. 6 Perceval was chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Palmerston’s government and held all the conservative values that Goulburn admired. Despite the erratic behaviour and moral dissolution of King George III, Goulburn believed in an unfaltering loyalty to the Crown and that the constitution was inviolable. The concessions to Roman Catholics, that benchmark of Castlereagh’s Irish policy, were anathema to the youngman, nothing more than an invitation to growing radicalism that might plunge the country into the chaos of revolution that had befallen France in 1789. Goulburn’s evangelical Anglicanism was anti-libertarian. He believed that the individual cast adrift from the need to be obedient to traditional authority ultimately became distanced from God. Social order, after all, was God’s work. In entering politics, Goulburn sought “to maintain the established institutions of the Country, to advance the cause of Religion and Learning, and to uphold, as essential to both, the interests of the University and of the Established Church.” 7
    Goulburn’s initial performance in the House of Commons little marked him for advancement into offices of government service. It was two years before he gathered the nerve to speak, and his declamation failed to impress. But in 1809 he travelled to Spain and Portugal to witness firsthand the difficulties facing the campaign there. He returned with a distinct appreciation for the army’s difficulties and a disdain for the Spanish and Portuguese that served to confirm in his mind the superiority of the British over all others. Shortly after his return that winter, Goulburn was offered a position as Home Office undersecretary, which he accepted enthusiastically. While serving with distinction in this post, the young bachelor briefly lost his head over Lady Selina Stewart. Having never learned the suave ways of his university fellows, he tried clumsily to court her, without success. “I am always afraid of marriages that arise out of excited feeling or sudden impulse,” he later stated and made no further mistake in that regard. Instead, considering his debt to the Montagus beyond repayment, he sought the hand of their third daughter, eighteen-year-old Jane, hailed by friends as such “a captivating little soul” that she resembled a “wren.” It was widely predicted that the marriage would prove a grand success, with each bringing out the best in the other. Goulburn commented that it was her “strength of intellect, her warmth of affection, her strong religious feeling” that attracted him. They were married on December 20, 1811, and Spencer Perceval turned over his house to them for a brief Christmas honeymoon. 8
    Perceval’s assassination five months later stunned the young couple, who heard the news while on a late-afternoon carriage drive in St. James’s Park. They hurried home, and once Goulburn was sure that his wifehad recovered from her initial attack of near-debilitating grief, he rushed to his office, only to find the home secretary personally interrogating the crazed murderer. Goulburn noted Bellingham’s “haggard countenance, his glaring eye, quivering lip and considered how short a time was to elapse before he would be called upon to answer before God for the crime which he had committed.” Later, Goulburn considered the fact that Bellingham was “taken, committed, tried, condemned, executed, dissected, all within one week from the time that he fired the shot” an overly hasty application of the King’s justice. 9
    With Perceval’s death, Goulburn’s future became uncertain. The Home Office received a new minister, Lord Sidmouth, who rewarded a member of his family with the undersecretary position. Goulburn was rescued from having to leave public