in the Maynooth Grant of 1845. After the outbreak of the Great Irish Famine, his decision to join with Whigs and Radicals to repeal the Corn Laws led to his resignation as Prime Minister in 1846. Peel remained an influential MP and leader of the Peelite faction until his death in 1850. Peel often started from a traditional Tory position in opposition to a measure, then reversed his stance and became the leader in supporting liberal legislation. This happened with the Test Act, Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Act, income tax and, most notably, the repeal of the Corn Laws. Historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote: "Peel was in the first rank of 19th-century statesmen. He carried Catholic Emancipation; he repealed the Corn Laws; he created the modern Conservative Party on the ruins of the old Toryism." Early life Peel was born at Chamber Hall, Bury, Lancashire, to the industrialist and parliamentarian Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, and his wife Ellen Yates. His father was one of the richest textile manufacturers of the early Industrial Revolution. The family moved from Lancashire to Drayton Manor near Tamworth, Staffordshire; the manor house has since been demolished, and the site occupied by Drayton Manor Theme Park. Peel received his early education from a clergyman tutor in Bury and at a clergyman's local school in Tamworth. He may also have attended Bury Grammar School or Hipperholme Grammar School, though evidence for either is anecdotal rather than textual. He started at Harrow School in February 1800. At Harrow, he was a contemporary of Lord Byron, who recalled of Peel that "we were on good terms" and that "I was always in scrapes, and he never". On Harrow's Speech Day in 1804, Peel and Byron acted part of Virgil's Aeneid, Peel playing Turnus and Byron playing Latinus. In 1805, Peel matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. His tutor was Charles Lloyd, later Regius Professor of Divinity, on Peel's recommendation appointed Bishop of Oxford. In 1808 Peel became the first Oxford student to take a double first in Classics and Mathematics. Peel was a law student at Lincoln's Inn in 1809. He also held military commissions as a captain in the Manchester Regiment of Militia in 1808, and later as lieutenant in the Staffordshire Yeomanry Cavalry in 1820. Early political career Member of Parliament Peel entered politics in 1809 at the age of 21, as MP for the Irish