Addington, Henry, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

Addington, Henry, 1st Viscount Sidmouth (1757-1844), British statesman, prime minister of Great Britain and Ireland (1801-1804). Born in London, the son of a prominent physician who counted George III among his patients, he was educated at Winchester and Brasenose College, Oxford. During his career he built up a reputation for stringent principles and inflexibility. He was called to the Bar in 1784, the same year he was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Devizes. At the instigation of William Pitt he was elected Speaker of the House in 1789. His staunch Anglicanism and conservative bent led George III to appoint him prime minister in 1801 in replacement to Pitt, who had resigned his office, being opposed to the king on the question of Roman Catholic emancipation.

His immediate popularity was boosted by the naval victory at Copenhagen and the restoration of Ottoman rule in Egypt, and further enhanced by the Treaty of Amiens. Peace enabled him to reduce the size of the armed forces and restructure the tax system, repealing the income tax. However, in 1803 Addington proved to be incapable of effective leadership in the face of the renewed Napoleonic threat. On his resignation in 1804, Pitt once again became prime minister: “Pitt is to Addington, as London is to Paddington”, ran a popular jingle of the day.

Addington was created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805 and joined the ministry of William Grenville as Lord Privy Seal in 1806, but resigned following Grenville’s attempt to allow Catholics in Ireland to hold military commissions. As home secretary, from 1812 to 1822, he was faced with widespread discontent due to unemployment, the rising cost of living, and destructive action by Luddites in 1817. He responded with harsh and restrictive policies, causing Habeas Corpus to be suspended in 1817, and in 1819 he curtailed the rights of people to hold public meetings and to distribute political tracts with the Six Acts. His popularity steadily declined after writing a letter in support of the action of the Manchester magistrates that had led to the Peterloo massacre and his oversight of the suppression of the Cato Street Conspiracy. He left government in 1824 but continued in political life, unsuccessfully opposing the Acts of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and Parliamentary Reform in 1832.