Grey, CHARLES, EARL, statesman, was born at Fallowden, Northumberland, 15th March 1764, and educated at Eton and Cambridge. On attaining his majority he was returned to parliament as member for Northumberland in the Whig interest, and ultimately succeeded to the leadership of the party. He was one of the managers of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and in 1792 helped to found the Society of the Friends of the People, whose object was the reform of the representative system. Taking advantage of the alarm caused by the French Revolution, Pitt suppressed the society, and at a later period Grey expressed regret for his share in the movement. Grey introduced the futile motion for the impeachment of Pitt, and took a prominent part in the temporary 'secession' of the Whigs from a parliament which was hostile to reform, and which he and his friends maintained did not represent the nation. He also strongly denounced the union between England and Ireland. On the advent of the Fox-Grenville administration in 1806, Grey, now Lord Howick, was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and on the death of Fox he became Foreign Secretary and leader of the House of Commons. Grey was compelled by circumstances to continue the war policy of Pitt. To his honour he carried through parliament the act abolishing the African slave-trade introduced by Wilberforce in 1807. The king quarrelled with his ministers on the Catholic relief question, and as Grey declined to give a promise not to press forward a measure for absolving Roman Catholics in the army and navy from the oath, the government was broken up.
In 1807 he succeeded his father as second Earl Grey. He ably led the Opposition for a period of eighteen years after the death of Perceval. He opposed the renewal of the war in 1815; denounced the coercive measures of the government against the people; condemned the bill of pains and penalties against Queen Caroline; defended the right of public meeting; and supported the enlightened commercial policy of Huskisson. He declined to lend any aid to Canning in 1827. Two years later he had the gratification of seeing the Catholic Emancipation Act carried. On the fall of the Wellington administration in 1830, Grey accepted the commands of William IV. to form a government in which he became prime-minister and First Lord of the Treasury. It was understood that parliamentary reform was to be treated as a cabinet question, and the new premier announced in the House of Lords that the policy of his administration would be one of peace, retrenchment, and reform. The first reform bill was produced in March 1831, but its defeat led to a dissolution and the return of a House of Commons still more thoroughly devoted to the cause of reform. A second bill was carried, which the Lords threw out in October, and riots ensued in various parts of the country. Early in the session of 1832 a third bill was carried in the Commons by an enormous majority, and it weathered the second reading in the Upper House; but when a motion by Lord Lyndhurst to postpone the disfranchising clauses until the enfranchising clauses had been discussed was adopted, ministers resigned. The Duke of Wellington was charged to form an administration, but upon his failure Grey returned to office with power to create a sufficient number of peers to carry the measure. Wellington now withdrew his opposition, and on the 4th of June the Reform Bill passed the House of Lords. Grey was the chief of a powerful party in the first reformed parliament, but he was not destined long to remain at the head of affairs. One other great measure, the act for the abolition of slavery in the colonies, he carried, as well as a number of minor reforms; but dissensions sprang up in the cabinet, and in consequence of his Irish difficulties Grey resigned office in July 1834. He now ceased to take any active part in politics, and spent his closing years chiefly at Howick, where he died, 17th July 1845. Grey was a chivalrous, able, and high-minded man. While not in the first rank of parliamentary orators, his speeches on those subjects in which he was deeply interested frequently attained to real eloquence. Though he was the leader of the aristocratic Whigs, his greatest claim to remembrance in history is the fact that he opened the portals of the Constitution to the people. See George Grey, Life and Opinions of the second Earl Grey (1861).
His son HENRY GREY, third Earl, was born December 28, 1802. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1826, as Lord Howick, was returned to the House of Commons for Winchester. He next sat for a brief period for Higham Ferrers, and after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 was elected for Northumberland. He was appointed Under-secretary for the Colonies in his father's ministry, but retired in 1833 because the cabinet would not support the immediate emancipation of the slaves. He subsequently held for a short time the post of Under-secretary in the Home Department, and in Melbourne's administration of 1835 became Secretary for War. In 1841 he was rejected for Northumberland, but returned for Sunderland, and now opposed Peel's policy. He succeeded his father in the peerage in 1845, and in the following year entered Lord John Russell's cabinet as Secretary for the Colonies. After the resignation of the government in 1852, he published his Defence of the Colonial Policy of
Lord Russell's Administration. He now took his seat on the cross-benches, and never afterwards held office. He opposed the Crimean war, and at a later period condemned the eastern policy of Lord Beaconsfield. He also frequently adopted a hostile attitude towards Mr Gladstone, to whom he was especially opposed at the general election of 1880. For many years past Lord Grey rarely spoke in the House of Lords, but from his retirement he wrote trenchant letters to the Times upon public affairs, and notably on colonial questions. In 1858 he issued his Essay on Parliamentary Government as to Reform; in 1867 he published his father's Correspondence with William IV.; and on various occasions he has printed speeches and letters of his own, including those to the Times on 'Free Trade with France,' which appeared in 1881. He died 9th October 1894.