Catherine Gladstone

Catherine Gladstone
Catherine and William Gladstone
Born	Catherine Glynne (1812-01-06)6 January 1812 Flintshire, Wales
Died	14 June 1900(1900-06-14) (aged 88) Flintshire, Wales
Burial place	Westminster Abbey
Spouse(s)	William Ewart Gladstone
Children	William Agnes Stephen Catherine Mary Helen Henry Herbert
Parent(s)	Stephen Mary Griffin

Catherine Gladstone (née Glynne; 6 January 1812 – 14 June 1900) was the wife of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone for 59 years, until his death in 1898.

She was the daughter of Sir Stephen Glynne, 8th Baronet of Hawarden Castle, who died when she was only three, and was reared with her sister Mary by her mother. The Glynne sisters, very close, were renowned for their beauty. They married on the same day in Hawarden Church, and their families visited one another and holidayed together incessantly. When Mary died, as Lady Lyttelton, in 1857, Catherine acted in some ways as mother to her children.

Her brother Stephen succeeded to the baronetcy in 1815. On his death in 1874, the Glynne baronetcy became extinct and the estates passed to Catherine and William's eldest son, William Henry. Through the myriad strains and links in her heredity, Catherine found herself, according to Masterman, related in one way or another to "half the famous names in English political history".

It was through her brother, who represented Flint as a Liberal MP, that Catherine met William Gladstone, reputedly in 1834 at the home in Tilney Street, London, of James Milnes Gaskell, one of Gladstone's Old Etonian friends and then Tory MP for Wenlock. They were married on 25 July 1839 and lived at her ancestral home Hawarden Castle, in Flintshire, Wales. They had eight children, including Herbert John and Henry Neville Gladstone. She was buried next to her late husband in Westminster Abbey. Their daughter Mary referred to them collectively as "The Great People".