Salisbury, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil, 3d Marquis of,, an English statesman; born in Hatfield, Herts., England, Feb. 3, 1830; was educated at Eton and Oxford. As Lord Robert Cecil he entered Parliament in 1853; in 1866 he was appointed secretary of state for India. In 1865 he became Lord Cranbourne and heir to the marquisate. He retired from the ministry, but on the death of his father in 1868 and his elevation to the House of Lords he returned to his old party associations. He resumed the secretaryship for India in 1874. In 1878 he accompanied Disraeli to the congress at Berlin, and on the death of that statesman became the recognized leader of the Conservative party. He became premier on the fall of the Gladstone government in 1885. Gladstone succeeded again to power in the end of the same year, but in the June following Salisbury again became premier and foreign secretary. In 1892 the marjority in Parliament being in favor of a Home Rule bill for Ireland, Salisbury retired from office. In 1895 he was recalled, and he died Aug. 23, 1903.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912. | 
