On 18 Jan. 1884 Dilke, Lord Granville, and Lord Northbrook met General Gordon with Lord Hartington and Lord Wolseley at the war office and they decided on behalf of the cabinet to send Gordon to the Soudan.
In 1885 the Gladstone ministry, externally weakened by the miscarriages of its Egyptian policy, and discredited by its failure to rescue Gordon, was also distracted almost to dissolution by internal dissensions arising out of its Irish policy. New bills for a partial renewal of the expiring Coercion Act, for land purchase and for local government in Ireland were before the cabinet early in 1885. Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain recommended a central administrative board, and resisted the other proposals without effect. On 19 May Gladstone announced in the House of Commons a land purchase bill. Thereupon Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain tendered their resignations. They were requested to reconsider them (Morley's Gladstone, iii. 194). But that necessity was spared them. An unexpected defeat on a proposed increase in the beer duties under the budget gave the whole cabinet an opportunity, which they eagerly welcomed, of resigning (8 June 1885). Neither Dilke nor Mr. Chamberlain had favoured the increase of the beer duties. He and Mr. Chamberlain projected under Parnell's auspices a tour in Ireland for the autumn. But Parnell's negotiations with the new conservative lord-lieutenant, the earl of Carnarvon, led him to withdraw his support, and the visit was abandoned. Dilke never again held office under the crown.
Dilke's fall was sudden and tragical. In August 1885 Mr. Donald Crawford, liberal M. P. for Lanark, filed a petition for divorce against his wife on the ground of her alleged adultery with Dilke. Mrs. Crawford was a sister of the wife of Dilke's only brother Ashton, and with her family he was on intimate terms. On the announcement of the charge, Dilke denied its truth in an open letter to the liberal association of Chelsea. The association accepted his disclaimer. He stood for the constituency — now a single member division — at the general election in Dec. 1885 and was returned by 4291 votes against 4116 cast for the conservative candidate. The divorce suit was heard on 12 Feb. 1886, when Mr. Crawford obtained a decree nisi against his wife, solely on the evidence of her confession. Dilke offered to deny on oath in the witness-box Mrs. Crawford's story, but his counsel declined to call him and his friends unwisely dissuaded him from insisting on being called The outcome of the suit was equivocal. The case against Dilke was dismissed, but Mrs. Crawford's guilt was declared proven on her own evidence, which inculpated none but him. In public opinion Dilke was not cleared of the allegations against him.
Meanwhile Dilke was not included in Gladstone's third administration (Feb. 1886), but he attended parliament as usual, and voted for Gladstone's home rule bill (7 June). His liberal friends at Chelsea expressed sympathy with him, and he stood again at the general election of July 1886. But he was defeated by 176 votes. His connection with the constituency was thus severed after eighteen years. Mainly owing to Dilke's representations to the queen's proctor, the divorce case was re-opened before the decree nisi was made absolute. The queen's proctor did not intervene directly on Dilke's behalf, and the application of both Dilke and Mrs. Crawford to plead in the suit was refused in Dilke's case on the ground that he had not given evidence at the first hearing (30 June). The second hearing began on 16 July 1886. Dilke and Mrs. Crawford both gave evidence at length and sustained a searching cross-examination. Mrs. Crawford acknowledged that she had committed adultery with a man not mentioned in her original confession, but withdrew none of her former charges against Dilke, and added odious details which were regarded by believers in Dilke's innocence to be inventions directed solely to prejudice. Dilke absolutely denied all the accusations. Finally the jury found that the original 'decree was obtained not contrary to the facts of the case and not by reason of material facts not having been brought before the court.' This amounted to a verdict against Dilke, and public opinion at large regarded the verdict as just. Dilke, however, maintained from the first and through the rest of his life the attitude and demeanour of an innocent man, and many, though not all, of his friends avowed and manifested their unshaken confidence in his honour and veracity.
Dilke bowed at once to the decision. To the electors of Chelsea he announced his withdrawal from public life; he pointed out the legal disadvantages under which he laboured at the second trial in being denied the status of a party to the proceedings, and at the same time he reasserted his innocence.
At the opening of these difficulties, on 3 Oct. 1885, Dilke married at Chelsea Emilia
