politician prime minister statesman
Grey was born at Fallodon, near Alnwick, Northumberland, on 13 March 1764, the son of General Sir Charles Grey, later the first Earl Grey, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of George Grey of Southwick, Durham. He was raised into a landed family, which lived at the other family seat, at Howick.
He was educated at a preparatory school in London, at Eton, and lastly, at King’s College, Cambridge.
In 1830 he became First Lord of the Admiralty, and used the opportunity to increase the pay of the navy.
With the death of Fox in September 1806, Grey became the leader of the main body of Whigs in the House of Commons. He resigned along with the government in 1807, when King George III refused to entertain any idea of Catholic emancipation. The experience of this collapse of government left him with an abiding hostility toward royal interference in the political process.
For the next twenty-three years, Grey led the Whig Party in opposition to a succession of Pittite and Tory administrations under Lord Portland, Spencer Perceval, Lord Liverpool, George Canning, Viscount Goderich, and the Duke of Wellington. He represented the constituencies of Appleby and Tavistock in 1807 until he was raised to the House of Lords as second Earl Grey of Howick. His move to the Lords meant that he could no longer easily control the radicals in the Commons, including his own brother-in-law Samuel Whitbread.
At times—for example, in 1809 and in 1812—it looked as though he and Lord Grenville might form a Whig government; and in 1820, he might well have become prime minister. This last opportunity fizzled, largely because Grey wanted a complete change in the political system in order to save the country—an impossibility at that time.
Although Grey was more favorably inclined toward the free-trade policies of Sir Robert Peel, Melbourne’s Tory successor between 1841 and 1846, Grey played no further, significant role in British politics. He died on 17 July 1845.
He endured opposition, attacking the Tory governments for undermining traditional liberties, the scandal of the “Peterloo Massacre” of 1819, and all the other repressive actions that took place after the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815, including the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1817, by which trial by jury was denied. He supported Queen Caroline in her conflict with George IV in 1820, thereby gaining popularity with the British public. He found himself unable to accept office until 1830, when George IV died and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Clarence as William IV. In the 1830 general election, following the death of George IV, the Whigs secured a majority, and the king asked Grey to form a government. Grey’s cabinet contained eight Whigs and four of George Cannings old Conservative followers, and included four future prime ministers: Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell, Lord Derby, and Lord Palmerston.
Grey’s first act as prime minister was to ask Lord Durham, his Radical nephew, and Lord John Russell to draw up a bill that would reform the political system. Although their plan was amended, the result was that 61 boroughs lost all their parliamentary seats and a further 47 lost one seat—these seats being redistributed to large-franchise English counties; to large, unrepresented cities and towns; and to London. The borough franchise was to be made uniform and based upon households taxed at the rate of £10 per year. However, there was to be no manhood suffrage or secret ballot. Grey was largely responsible for this sweeping reform, championing it through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, being convinced that it was the only solution to civil strife. When the bill was defeated in the Lords in 1832, he offered to resign and call another general election. However, fearing a Whig landslide and an overwhelming Whig presence in the Commons as well as the creation of new Whig peers in the House of Lords, the Lords and the king agreed to the reforms without further significant resistance. The “Great” Reform Act of 1832—the most important constitutional change of the early nineteenth century—was thus achieved through Grey’s persistence.
Grey’s ministry also introduced numerous other reforms. The most important of these was the Factory Act of 1833, which reduced the hours of work for children and created a factory inspectorate. Also important was the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), which replaced the old law with a new one based on the imposition of a workhouse test and the abandonment of outdoor relief, the payment of an allowance to the poor who were not interred in the workhouse. This act was even more unpopular with laborers and some employers than the Factory Act, and it was strongly resisted in the north of England, where textile workers relied upon outdoor relief to tide them over lulls and interruptions in trade. In 1834, as a result of cabinet splits over the proposed appropriation of Irish Church revenues, Grey decided to resign in favor of Lord
Melbourne, who sustained Whig rule (with a brief hiatus between 1834 and 1835) until 1841. Grey disliked Melbourne, and declined the offer of the post of Lord Privy Seal in his government.
His political career began in 1786 when he won a by-election for the parliamentary seat of Northumberland, which he held until 1807, when he was returned to Parliament by means of the influence of the powerful Percy family, on the assumption that he would support the government of William Pitt, the Younger. In fact he was won over to the Whigs by Charles James Fox, and was a Foxite Whig for the rest of his political career. He was opposed to the monarchy, opposed tyrannies abroad, and sought to establish the constitutional freedoms that the Whigs had sought since the Revolution of 1688. He supported Edmund Burke in the Commons impeachment of Warren Hastings for his alleged misgovernment of India. He supported Fox in 1788 in opposing the idea that George III should be replaced by an unrestricted Regency of the Prince of Wales while he, George III, was suffering from mental and physical illness, but did not agree with him in supporting the French Revolution. He was a member of the Whig Club and joined the Society of the Friends of the People, which was committed to furthering constitutional reform. In 1794 he joined Fox to head a small Whig party of about sixty M.P.s who were committed to various reforms, although not always parliamentary reform; the Whig supporters of Lord Portland joined him in government with Pitt.
The Pitt ministry, supported by the Portland Whigs, opposed all the reforms advocated by the Foxite Whigs. The Foxite Whigs, in turn, battled against the repressive Seditious Meetings and Treasonable Practices Bills, which were carried forward by Lord Grenville, a Pordand Whig. In 1801, Grey refused to join the Whig government of Henry Addington (Lord Sid- mouth) because it did not offer sufficient promise of reforms (he later referred to this decision as the “happiest escape” he had ever had in his life). Grey was uneasy about the possible alliance of the Foxite Whigs with the Pittite Tories at this stage. He was even less enamored of the coalition of Whigs in 1806 and 1807, assembled within the so-called “Ministry of All the Talents” led by Lord Grenville. Nevertheless, this ministry gave him his only taste of office before 1830.
His reputation rests largely upon the fact that his government (1830-1834) was responsible for widening the political franchise through the Reform Act of 1832, and for introducing other reforming legislation, including the abolition of slavery, the 1833 Factory Act, and the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. An aristocratic Whig who trimmed his radical demands to the political needs of the age, Grey was, by any standards, a major reforming figure in the nineteenth century.
In 1794 he married Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby, daughter of William Brabazon Ponsonby, later Baron Ponsonby of Imokilly.
