Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Lexden (Conservative). It was answered on Wednesday, 25 April 2012.

Spencer Perceval

Question: My Lords, would my noble friend think of reminding Mr Henry Bellingham that he has already experienced the Perceval family's taste for revenge, having been deprived of his Commons seat at the 1997 election by a direct descendant of the assassinated Prime Minister?

Answer: I have to admit that that was not in my brief. Perhaps I might add that Spencer Perceval was, like Wilberforce, an evangelical, and having read a little about him, I have to say that he was something of a prig. Included within his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography is the fact that in 1800 he wrote a pamphlet on Biblical prophecy in which he referred to the French Revolution as, "““a divine instrument destined to destroy popish superstitions””," and identified Napoleon Bonaparte as the woman in Revelation, chapter 17, "““who [sits] upon a … beast … the mother of harlots … drunken with the blood of the saints””."

Secondary information