Charles, Earl Grey
A Great Reforming Prime Minister
Unfortunately, he is better known for his affair with Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and his association with Earl Grey tea, which was named after him.
Education of Charles Grey
Born on March 13, 1764 in Falloden, Northumberland to the first Earl Grey and his wife, Elizabeth, Grey was the second son of nine children.
Like many sons of the aristocracy, he went to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He didn’t gain a degree but he did acquire insights into the art of oratory. He took a Grand Tour of Europe and traveled on that continent for three years.
Political Career of Charles Grey
Ambitious, proud and handsome, Grey became an MP for Northumberland at only 23.
He impressed many with his first speech which opposed the free trade treaty with France in Parliament. He became a member of the Whig party, which favored reform, and joined Charles Fox’s circle.
The ascendency of the conservative party, the Tories, ruined the ambitions of the Whigs for many years. King George III favored the conservatives. When the King became incapacitated due to mental illness, the Whigs hoped that the Prince of Wales, who was on their side of politics, would become Regent. However, the King recovered.
A disagreement between Burke and Fox over the French Revolution and war with France divided the Whigs and they remained in opposition for many years.
Grey formed The Society of the Friends of the People in 1792 with other Whig aristocrats. The aims of the Society were to reform Parliament by giving people more frequent elections and more equal representation. He introduced two Reform Bills during 1792 and 1793 but they were defeated.
When Fox joined the cabinet of Henry Addison’s coalition government, Grey became the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1806. He had refused a place in the government unless Charles Fox was asked to join.
He unsuccessfully fought for Catholic Emancipation as well as parliamentary reforms.
Private Life of Charles Grey
When he was only 22, Grey had an affair with the beautiful Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, who was seven years older. She held political salons and helped the Whigs in their fight to gain power.
Georgiana and Grey had an illegitimate daughter, Eliza. Her husband ordered her to make a choice between divorce and giving up her children, or ending the affair with Grey. She ended the affair and Grey was angry with her for many years. Eventually they became friends again and Georgiana even became quite friendly with his wife.
Grey married the much younger, Mary Ponsonby, in 1794. He didn’t tell Georgiana who had to read it in the papers. The marriage was happy and they had sixteen children.
Charles Grey: A Great Reforming Prime Minister
When Wellington’s ministry collapsed and William IV, who was more sympathetic to the Whigs was on the throne, the Whig Party finally formed government. Grey became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1830. He oversaw many reforms, including the 1832 Reform Act, which allowed more people to vote in elections, the abolition of the slave trade, the Factory Act which made working conditions safer in factories, and introduced the Poor Law Amendment Act which established many workhouses and was meant to improve the conditions of the poor.
Grey retired to his family home, Howick Hall in Northumberland, in 1834. James Grant said in his Recollections of the House of Lords (1836):
The name of Earl Grey is one which is, without question, destined to be better known by posterity than of any other statesman of the present day. The zeal and energy with which, in early life, he espoused those liberal principles of Reform which he afterwards not only lived to see triumphant, but whose triumph was chiefly brought about by his own instrumentality. He was the author of that great measure, and the Minister under whose auspices it was triumphantly carried through both Houses of Parliament, in defiance of a most decided and powerful opposition, that gives him that commanding station which he now occupies in the eyes of the country, and which his memory will inevitably occupy in the eyes of future ages.
Sources
Foreman, Amanda, The Duchess. Harper Collins, London, 1998
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