Frederick John Robinson, 1st Earl of Ripon (1 November 1782 – 28 January 1859), styled The Honourable F. J. Robinson until 1827 and known between 1827 and 1833 as the Viscount Goderich (pronounced GOH-dritch), the name by which he is best known to history, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1827 to 1828.
A member of the rural landowning aristocracy, Robinson entered politics through family connections. In the House of Commons, he rose through junior ministerial ranks, achieving cabinet office in 1818 as President of the Board of Trade. In 1823, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post he held for four years. In 1827, he was raised to the peerage, and in the House of Lords was Leader of the House and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.
In 1827, Prime Minister George Canning died after only 119 days in office, and Goderich succeeded him. However, he was unable to hold together Canning's fragile coalition of moderate Tories and Whigs, and he himself resigned after only 144 days. Canning and Goderich were the two shortest-ruling Prime Ministers in British history, until Liz Truss in 2022.
After leaving the premiership Goderich served in the cabinets of two of his successors, the Earl Grey and Sir Robert Peel.
Robinson was born at Newby Hall, Yorkshire, the second son of Thomas Robinson, 2nd Baron Grantham, by his wife Lady Mary Jemima Yorke, a daughter of Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke. He was educated at a preparatory school at Sunbury-on-Thames, then attended Harrow School from 1796 to 1799, followed by St John's College, Cambridge, from 1799 to 1802. William Pitt the Younger was Member of Parliament for Cambridge University, to which, as The Times said, "accordingly most of the budding Tory statesmen of the day resorted". Robinson was an accomplished classicist, winning Sir William Browne's Medal for the best Latin ode in 1801. After graduating in 1802 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn. He remained a member there until 1809, but did not pursue a legal career and was not called to the bar.
Against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, Robinson did part-time military service at home as captain (1803), ultimately major (1814–1817) in the Northern Regiment of West Riding Yeomanry.
Early political career: 1804–1807
Member of Parliament, 1804–1812
Robinson entered politics through a family connection. His mother's cousin, the third Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, appointed him as his private secretary in 1804. Two years later Hardwicke secured for him the parliamentary seat of Carlow, a pocket borough near Dublin. In 1807 Robinson gave up the seat and was elected as MP for Ripon, close to his family home in Yorkshire.
First political appointments: 1807–1812
In his first years in Parliament Robinson declined offers of junior ministerial posts, out of deference to his patron Hardwicke, who was an opponent of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Portland. However, the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, chose him as the secretary of Lord Pembroke's mission to Vienna, aimed at securing a new treaty of alliance between Britain and the Austrian Empire. The mission was unsuccessful, but Robinson's reputation was not damaged, and, as his biographer E Royston Pike puts it, "as a good Tory [he was] given several small appointments in successive ministries."
His political thinking was greatly influenced by Canning, but he became the protégé of Canning's rival Lord Castlereagh, who appointed him his under-secretary at the War Office in May 1809. When Castlereagh resigned from the government in October, unwilling to serve under the new Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, Robinson resigned with him. In June 1810 he accepted office as a member of the Board of Admiralty. At the time of Perceval's assassination early in 1812, he was absent from parliament ostensibly on militia duties in Yorkshire.
He was made a Privy Counsellor in August 1812,
In 1814 Robinson married Lady Sarah Hobart (1793–1867), daughter of the 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire, and first cousin to Castlereagh's wife. There were three children of the marriage, only one of whom survived to adulthood:
Eleanor Henrietta Robinson (22 May 1815 – 31 October 1826)
Hobart Frederick Robinson (baptised 8 September 1816 – 14 September 1816)
George Frederick Samuel Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon (24 October 1827 – 9 July 1909)
Robinson served under Lord Liverpool as Vice-President of the Board of Trade between 1812 and 1818, and as joint-Paymaster of the Forces between 1813 and 1817, from which position he sponsored the Corn Laws of 1815. Robinson's Corn Importation Bill, successfully presented to Parliament in February 1815, was a protectionist measure, imposing minimum prices for imported wheat and other grains. The historian Gregor Dallas writes: