Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-1895), the son of the Duke of Marlborough, entered Parliament in 1874, the same year as his marriage to the daughter of an American financier. After the Conservative defeat at the polls in 1880, he became Leader of a group of independently-minded young Conservative MPs - the 'fourth party' - who harried Gladstone's government and the Commons Leader of their own party, Stafford Northcote. Following the fall of Gladstone's government in 1885, Churchill and his allies secured the removal of Northcote to the Lords, and Churchill became Secretary of State for India. When the Conservatives returned after the general election of 1886, Salisbury gave him the positions of chancellor of the exchequer and Leader of the Commons. A few months later, however, he resigned, in a disagreement over defence expenditure. Despite continued political ambitions, he never returned to office.

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