Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was an English historian, essayist and Whig politician. The son of the abolitionist Zachary Macaulay, he made his name with essays in the Edinburgh Review and with speeches for the Reform Bill of 1832 as a young member of Parliament. He spent four years in India on the Supreme Council, where he drafted the Indian penal code. His Lays of Ancient Rome appeared in 1842, his collected Essays in 1843, and the History of England from the Accession of James II, which sold like a novel, in five volumes from 1848. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay in 1857.