Colonial Despatches

Sir Frederick Peel served as under-secretary for the colonies from 1851 to 1855.1

The second son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, Frederick attended Harrow School and Trinity College at Cambridge on his way to becoming a lawyer and Liberal MP in 1849.2 He was responsible for the Clergy Reserves Bill of 1851,3 which gave the government of Canada effective control over its churches and ended the use of Crown land or its sale to subsidize a Protestant clergy.4

Despite two marriages, to Elizabeth Emily, niece of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Janet Somerset, he left no children behind when he died on June 6, 1906, in London.5

• 1. G. S. Woods, Peel, Sir Frederick, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. Ibid.
• 4. The Quebec History Encyclopedia, Clergy Reserves.
• 5. G. S. Woods, Peel, Sir Frederick, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.