Lady Peel felt the delights of a respite from the anxieties inseparable from public life, and enjoyed a period of repose alone with her husband at Drayton in the summer of 1846. But he was strenuous in opposition and was almost as indefatigable in his attendance at the House as when he was in office.
On the night of 28th June 1850 there was a great and memorable debate in the House of Commons on Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. Peel criticised it unfavourably in a speech that considerably reduced the majority in favour of the resolution approving the foreign policy of the Government. The debate lasted till past daybreak on the 29th, and Peel walked home in the bright midsummer morning. During the day he attended a meeting of the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition, but both he and Lady Peel felt unaccountably depressed and despondent. She suggested as a means of distraction and refreshment that her husband should go for a ride in Hyde Park. He left his name in the visitors’ book at Buckingham Palace, rode on up Constitution Hill, saluted a lady of his acquaintance who was also riding, when his horse became restive and threw him. He was placed in a passing carriage and driven home. He was taken into the dining-room, and never again left it alive. After suffering terrible pain he died on 2nd July. Burial was offered in Westminster Abbey, but in accordance with Peel’s wish he was laid to rest in Drayton Church.
A peerage was offered Lady Peel by Lord John Russell. This she refused in a well-known letter to Lord John. She declared “that the solace (if any such remains for me) for the deplored bereavement I sustain will be that I bear the same unaltered honoured name that lives for ever distinguished by his virtues and his services.” And if the refusal had not been founded on her own feeling she went on to say that her husband had expressly desired that no members of his family should accept, if offered, any title, distinction, or reward on account of his services to his country.
Lady Peel’s grief was profound. She wrote to Lord Aberdeen, who himself had suffered greatly from the loss of so close a friend, a month later: “He was the light of my life, my brightest joy and pride. I am desolate and most unhappy. Still I am his; our union is but suspended, not dissolved.”
If anything could have consoled her, it would have been the public grief at her husband’s death. All the time he lingered a crowd hung night and day about the house; such general gloom and regret had scarcely ever before been known. As the body was being taken through London to the station, weeping women ran out from the alleys to pay their last respects to him who was veritably the “People’s Minister.” Lady Peel, too, had the deep sympathy of her Sovereign. When the Queen passed through London on 9th December 1850 she asked Lady Peel to go and see her at Buckingham Palace. She found the widowed lady broken-hearted, and crushed by the agony of her grief. In the May of the next year the Queen sent her a copy of the portrait of Peel in her possession, in acknowledging which Lady Peel referred to her husband as “the once bright, lost joy of my past life.”
Lady Peel received letters of condolence from Marie Amélie, Queen of France, the Czar of Russia, and the Grand Duke of Saxony. Guizot, writing to Lord Aberdeen, said in referring to Lady Peel, “J’ai vu leur intérieur. Le bonheur le plus pur n’en est pas moins fragile.”
The house in town with all its contents was left to Lady Peel, as well as a large sum of money under the deed of settlement. The remainder of her life was spent quietly in the society of her children and grandchildren and her intimate friends.
Lady Peel died suddenly of heart failure at her house in London on 28th October 1859. She spent the evening with her daughter, Lady Jersey, whose husband had died on the 24th. She returned home, went to bed seemingly in her usual health, but when her maid went to call her the next morning she found her dead. Many griefs had told on her. The deaths of her husband, of her sailor son, Captain William Peel, who, severely wounded at the second relief of Lucknow and while still weak, succumbed to an attack of small-pox at Cawnpore in 1858, and of her son-in-law, Lord Jersey, had been too much for her naturally delicate constitution. She was buried at Drayton beside her husband.
Lady Peel’s individuality scarcely stands out apart from her husband. She was ever the gracious presence by his side, lightening his cares, cheering him when discouraged, merging her wishes and hopes in his. Her special qualities of heart and head made her the right companion for a man of Peel’s temperament.