Sir Robert Peel was then engaged in rallying the shattered forces of Toryism under the new name of Conservatives, and building up a working opposition. He welcomed the eloquent young Oxonian, and when he became Prime Minister in December, 1834, he gave William Gladstone one of the minor offices in his shortlived government. In the spring of 1835 he was again a private member of the House, free to devote himself to the religious and literary pursuits which appealed so strongly to him. In 1838, when the Tractarian movement was at its height, Gladstone wrote his book on "The State in its Relations with the Church." Reviewing the work Macaulay described the author as "the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories," words often quoted in later years, when his political bedfellows were of quite another sort. The book increased the author's reputation. In 1839 he was married to Miss Catharine Glynne of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire. In 1840 his second important book, a vindication of High Church principles, came from the press. The next year his leader, Peel, came back to power, giving Gladstone, of course, a post in the government (vice-president of the Board of Trade). Gladstone was then a protectionist like his party chief. He bore a hand in the preparation of the tariff legislation of that epoch-making administration, and though temporarily not a member of the House of Commons when the bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws was carried, in 1846, he helped to frame it, and to secure its passage. He had been fully converted to the principles of free trade as preached by Richard Cobden and the Manchester school, and remained true to that principle to the last.