Charles Grey

Prime minister of Great Britain (1830-1834)

• Born: March 13, 1764
• Birthplace: Fallodon, Northumberland, England
• Died: July 17, 1845
• Place of death: Howick, Northumberland, England

Grey was prime minister of Great Britain for a relatively brief period, but he oversaw one of the most important political transformations in British history. Recognizing that parliamentary reform was necessary in order to maintain the ascendancy of the aristocracy in a rapidly changing English society, he led the government that passed the Reform Bill of 1832.

Early Life

Charles Grey was born in his family’s country house only a few miles from the sea in England’s county Northumberland. His uncle was a baronet, whose nearby estate, Howick, Grey was later to occupy and then inherit. His father, Sir Charles Grey, had distinguished himself in military service, rose to the rank of general, and was made a peer in 1801. As the eldest surviving son (an older brother died no more than a few weeks after his birth), Charles Grey would succeed to his father’s title and a seat in the House of Lords.

At the age of six, Grey was sent to a boarding school in Marylebone (London), where he spent three unhappy years until he arrived at Eton at the age of nine. During his eight years at Eton, Grey excelled in the largely classical curriculum, and in 1781, at the age of seventeen, he made the short journey to Trinity College, Cambridge. As was the case with many sons of the aristocracy and greater gentry, Grey did not take a degree. In 1784, he embarked on the Grand Tour, considered an essential part of the education of a young English aristocrat in the eighteenth century. He visited the south of France, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1786, during his last months on the Continent, Grey was elected a member of Parliament for the county of Northumberland. He was to remain a county member until 1807, after which he represented the pocket boroughs of Appleby and Tavistock.

In 1794, Grey married Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby, with whom he had fifteen children. Although he developed a reputation in public life for being stiff and aloof, Grey’s marriage was happy, his family life warm and affectionate. The contentment he found with his family would later account, at least in part, for his occasional tardiness in arriving for the parliamentary session, his absences for a session or more, or, once parliamentary business was completed, his prompt return to Howick, a four-day journey from London by coach during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Like many military families, Grey’s family had moderate Tory connections. However, Grey affiliated himself with the Foxite Whigs. This association may well have been the result of personal friendships rather than political principle. During the 1780’s, it would have been difficult to distinguish the Foxites from other aristocratic factions that claimed the Whig name and, thereby, connected themselves with the legacy of the Glorious Revolution, with which the Whigs had become identified. During the 1790’s, however, the Foxites reinforced the association of Whiggery with liberty in general and with a number of specific liberal causes. Grey was instrumental in this development.

Life’s Work

Grey earned a reputation as an excellent orator in an age when oratory was highly valued. After participating in the proceedings to impeach Warren Hastings, he gained special attention, even notoriety, for his role in founding the Society of the Friends of the People in April, 1792. The society was an organization of young men, most of them aristocrats like Grey, that supported the reform of Parliament. Decades later, Grey was embarrassed about his youthful ardor which, in these early years of the French Revolution, inspired him to organize the society.

From the outset, Grey and most of the Friends distinguished themselves from radicals. The very name, Friends of the People, signified an attitude of paternalism and benevolent condescension toward the lower orders. The Foxite Whigs with whom Grey associated remained an aristocratic party, and Grey considered aristocracy as the intermediary between the Crown, which might be inclined toward arbitrary power, and the people, whose liberties aristocrats were to defend. Grey was never a democrat, a designation he associated with varieties of radicalism, and always cherished his aristocratic connection. Nevertheless, among other aristocratic factions, proposals for parliamentary reform appeared as assaults on both aristocracy and monarchy, especially as the French Revolution entered its more radical phase.

Grey’s motions for inquiries into the state of the representation during the 1790’s and his proposal in 1797 for a reform of Parliament with triennial parliaments, a uniform property qualification for the suffrage, and abolition of rotten boroughs—parliamentary constituencies that had little or no population and were controlled by the owners of specific properties—were immediately rejected. The Friends of the People, however, succeeded in widening an already existing rift in the Whig opposition, enlisting the acquiescence if not the enthusiasm of Fox, and driving the more conservative Whigs to support William Pitt’s government. During the 1790’s, Grey also endorsed Fox’s opposition to legislation considered to infringe on liberty—the suspension of habeas corpus (1794-1801), the Seditious Meetings Act (1795), and the Alien Bill (1799). After 1797, Grey joined the general Foxite withdrawal from parliamentary attendance for several sessions.

In 1806, Grey joined the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty in the Fox-Grenville coalition government. (He was then styled Lord Howick, a courtesy title resulting from his father’s elevation to an earldom, but he remained in the House of Commons.) When Charles James Fox died in September, 1806, Grey succeeded him as secretary of state for foreign affairs and was generally acknowledged as leader of the Foxite Whigs. The ministry was dismissed by George III , technically on a matter concerning the appointment of Catholics as staff officers in the army, something that Grey thought an important gesture to conciliate Catholic Ireland. From their dismissal in 1807, the Whigs supported the right of Catholics to sit in Parliament.

In November, 1807, after Grey’s father died, Grey became the second Earl Grey. Twenty-three years were to elapse before he returned to government. During those years, he was generally considered to be the leader of the Whig Party, which in 1817 separated from the Grenvillites with whom they had cooperated in opposition since the dismissal of the Fox-Grenville government. Grey was so often removed from London and from Parliament, however, that he was little more than a titular leader, dispensing advice from afar. He frequently had to be coaxed by such friends as Lord Holland to take a more active part in politics.

No longer enthusiastic about parliamentary reform, Grey often considered retirement. He was occasionally active, as in 1819, when he vigorously protested the Tory government’s repressive Six Acts, and the following year, when he opposed George IV’s divorce proceedings against Queen Caroline, thereby earning the king’s enmity and ensuring that he would never be called to cabinet office during the new reign. Other Whigs were drawn to join or to support George Canning’s government in 1827 (Grey despised Canning), and when Wellington’s government was compelled to pass a bill for Catholic Emancipation, the Whigs were deprived of the one issue that had unified them in opposition. Some Whigs, moreover, began to look for a new leader.

Several developments dramatically transformed the prospects of both the Whigs and Grey. George IV’s death, his succession by William IV , and the elections of 1830 encouraged the Whigs in their organized opposition to Wellington’s government. Wellington’s subsequent intransigence on parliamentary reform resulted in his government’s defeat (though, technically, it was defeated on another matter). Grey, at the age of sixty-six, was chosen by the king as his prime minister in November, 1830. It was understood that the government would be pledged to parliamentary reform.

Grey’s government was a coalition, ministers being drawn from Whigs of Grey’s generation, younger members of the party, Canningites, and Ultra-Tories. Of the thirteen men who formed the original Grey cabinet, nine were in the House of Lords and one was an Irish peer in the Commons. Three others were in the Commons, of whom one, the leader of the House, Lord Althorp, was heir to an earldom. Indeed, Grey’s government was the most aristocratic of the century. A commitment to the ascendancy of the aristocracy and the preservation of existing institutions bound the cabinet together, along with the conviction that if an effective measure of parliamentary reform were not passed, the country would face the alternative of revolution. Although the government was a coalition, its moving spirits were Whigs, and the committee of four ministers that Grey appointed to draft a reform bill—Lord Durham, Lord Duncannon, Lord John Russell, and Sir James Graham—had impeccable Whig credentials.

While the Reform Bill underwent numerous changes from its introduction in March, 1831, until its final passage in July, 1832, its central features remained the abolition of rotten boroughs, the addition of representation to hitherto neglected populous towns, and the extension of the franchise in the boroughs to all householders who either owned a house worth, or paid rent of, more than ten pounds yearly. When the government was defeated on an amendment in the House of Commons, the subsequent election of April, 1831, ensured a lower house favorable to reform. When the House of Lords defeated the bill on its second reading in October, 1831, however, Grey and the cabinet were confronted with the problem of overcoming the resistance of the Lords while retaining the confidence of the king.

Grey was a masterful politician during those years. His occasional threats to resign proved to be remarkably effective in stemming cabinet dissension. Moreover, the king’s confidence was reposed in Grey personally rather than in the cabinet collectively. Retaining that confidence was crucial, all the more so because it became increasingly apparent that the only way to persuade the House of Lords to pass the bill was by resorting to a creation of peers by the king. Only with great reluctance did Grey eventually acquiesce in this alternative. It was his personal influence with King William that ultimately persuaded the monarch to consent to a creation, but only after the duke of Wellington failed to form a coalition government in May, 1832. The Lords finally consented to the bill rather than witness a mass creation of peers.

The English Reform Bill of 1832 is one of the most significant acts of Parliament in British history. It was followed by bills for Ireland and Scotland. Grey’s ministry also was responsible for other significant legislation, some of which it initiated, some of which it merely supervised. The Irish Church Reform Act of 1833 reduced the number of bishops in the Church of Ireland and eliminated the church cess, a tax paid by occupiers of land, mostly Catholic, to support the Protestant church. The Factory Act of 1833 was the first effective regulation of the conditions of factory labor. The abolition of slavery in the empire in 1833 complemented the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 by the Fox-Grenville ministry. Though it was passed after his resignation, the Poor Law Amendment Act was initiated when Grey was prime minister. Complementing its liberal record in domestic affairs, in foreign affairs Grey’s government became associated with the defense of constitutionalism, especially in Belgium and Spain, against the reactionary policies of the eastern powers.

Grey’s government came to an end in July, 1834. When Lord Althorp resigned as a result of an imbroglio involving secret dealings by other ministers with Daniel O’Connell concerning a renewal of an Irish Coercion Bill, Grey followed him into retirement. Grey declined the king’s proposal that he form a new government after the defeat of Peel’s ministry in April, 1835. He spent his remaining years in tranquillity at Howick, where he died on July 17, 1845.

Significance

The second Earl Grey cherished his aristocratic connections and once observed that he had a predilection for old institutions. Both in his youthful days with the Friends of the People and during his premiership, he thought that parliamentary reform was necessary to preserve those institutions and the ascendancy of the aristocracy. He argued that reform was conservative. It was a concession to popular opinion that was necessary to maintain stability. He sincerely believed as prime minister that failure to implement a substantial reform of Parliament would result in a revolution that would destroy monarchy as well as aristocracy. One of his achievements, which few of his contemporaries could have managed, was to persuade the king that the alternative to reform was revolution; for without the king’s support, however grudging, the Reform Bill could not have passed.

Grey never doubted the propriety of the aristocracy’s ascendancy. However, he recognized that to govern effectively, it had to retain the confidence of the people. He sometimes thought of reform legislation as a boon to be bestowed from above by an enlightened aristocracy, whose benevolence was to be properly acknowledged by a grateful populace. The deference of the people was a reflection of their proper subordination to their governors. Although Grey recognized that the emerging middle classes had developed a new form of property that deserved representation in Parliament, he retained the idea that substantial landed property owners should direct the affairs of society for the benefit of all. Throughout his career, Grey scorned radicals and opposed any Whig connection with them, which, he thought, could only undermine the social order he sought to preserve. Committed to maintaining that order, he supported reform in order to preserve it.

Bibliography

Brock, Michael. The Great Reform Act. London: Hutchinson, 1973. This study considers the recent scholarship on the Reform Bill but accepts the established interpretation that it was a concession designed to maintain stability.

Davis, H. W. C. The Age of Grey and Peel. London: Oxford University Press, 1929. An old but still valuable study of the Whigs and their values, especially good on the Whig suspicion of radicals. More critical of Grey than is G. M. Trevelyan (see below).

Derry, John W. Charles, Earl Grey: Aristocratic Reformer. Cambridge, Mass.: B. Blackwell, 1992. Derry is more critical of Grey than other writers, stressing his aristocratic values and the traditionalism of his outlook. Derry describes the events and influences that affected Grey’s political career, discusses Grey’s relationships with other politicians, and places the Reform Bill of 1832 into a historical and political context.

Kriegel, Abraham D. “The Irish Policy of Lord Grey’s Government.” English Historical Review 86 (January, 1971): 22-45. Discusses the association of concession with coercion in the government’s Irish policy and relates it to the Whigs’ policy on parliamentary reform.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Liberty and Whiggery in Early Nineteenth-Century England.” Journal of Modern History 52 (June, 1980): 253-278. Considers the Whig idea of liberty and its relationship to Whig legislation such as the Reform Bill.

Mitchell, Austin. The Whigs in Opposition, 1815-1830. London: Oxford University Press, 1967. An excellent study of the Whig Party from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until the eve of Grey’s government. Grey is portrayed as a reluctant leader during this period.

Roberts, Michael. The Whig Party, 1807-1812. London: Macmillan, 1939. Follows the intricate politics of the Whigs in opposition from the dismissal of the Fox-Grenville ministry until the establishment of George IV’s regency in 1812.

Smith, E. A. Lord Grey, 1764-1845. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. The late E. A. Smith was a historian who wrote several books about early nineteenth century British politics. His biography of Grey is a comprehensive account of the man and politician.

Trevelyan, G. M. Lord Grey of the Reform Bill. London: Longmans, Green, 1920. Not among Trevelyan’s better studies, this old and dated biography is insufficiently critical but remains the only modern biography.