Background
George Ward Hunt was the eldest son of the Rev. George Hunt of Winkfield, Berkshire, and of Emma, the youngest daughter of Samuel Gardiner of Coombs Lodge, Oxfordshire. He was born on 30 July 1823.
George Ward Hunt was the eldest son of the Rev. George Hunt of Winkfield, Berkshire, and of Emma, the youngest daughter of Samuel Gardiner of Coombs Lodge, Oxfordshire. He was born on 30 July 1823.
He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. Hunt was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in November 1851, and worked as a barrister on the Oxford circuit. However, his real interest was politics.
After unsuccessfully contesting the Northampton seat in 1852 and 1857 as a Conservative, Hunt entered Parliament on 16 December 1857, as M.P for the northern division of Northamptonshire, which he represented for twenty years.
Hunt served as financial secretary to the Treasury under the fourteenth Lord Derby between July 1866 and February 1868, and then became chancellor of the exchequer when Benjamin Disraeli became prime minister in February 1868. He retired with the end of Disraeli’s ministry in December 1868, having accomplished little. He was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty when Disraeli formed a new ministry in February 1874. However, he fell ill in 1877 and died in office, of gout, on 29 July 1877.
His electoral victory followed close on the heels of his marriage to Alice, the third daughter of Robert Eden, the Bishop of Moray and Ross.