Robert Peel, as Chief Secretary in Dublin …

Years: 1814 - 1814

Robert Peel, as Chief Secretary in Dublin in 1813, had proposed the setting up of a specialist police force, later called "Peelers".

The Royal Irish Constabulary is founded under Peel in 1814.

Born in Bury, Lancashire, England, to the industrialist and Member of Parliament Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, one of the richest textile manufacturers of the early Industrial Revolution, young Robert had been educated first at Hipperholme Grammar School, then at Harrow School and finally Christ Church, Oxford, where he had taken took a double first in classics and mathematics.

He is also believed to have attended Bury Grammar School.

While living in Tamworth, he is credited with the development of the Tamworth Pig by breeding Irish stock with some local Tamworth pigs.

Groomed for statesmanship by his father, Peel had entered politics in 1809 at the young age of twenty-one as a Tory MP for the Irish rotten borough of Cashel, Tipperary.

With a scant twenty-four electors on the rolls, he had won election unopposed.

His sponsor for the election (besides his father) had been the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, with whom Peel's political career is to be entwined for the next twenty-five years.

Peel had made his maiden speech at the start of the 1810 session, when he was chosen by the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, to second the reply to the king's speech.

His speech was a sensation, famously described by the Speaker, Charles Abbot, as "the best first speech since that of William Pitt." (Gash, Norman (1961). Mr. Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830. New York: Longmans.)

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