Grey, SIR GEORGE, Baronet, English statesman, was the son of the first baronet, and nephew of the great Reform leader, Earl Grey. Born at Gibraltar, May 11, 1799, he was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, where he took a first-class in classics. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1826, but relinquished the law after succeeding to the baronetcy in 1828. In 1832 he was returned to the House of Commons for Devonport, which he continued to represent for fifteen years. He was appointed Under-secretary for the Colonies in 1834, having already made his mark in parliament, and Lord Melbourne reappointed him to the same office in 1835. For some years his chief speeches were delivered in connection with Canadian affairs and the constitutional difficulties in Jamaica. When Lord John Russell brought in a bill for the temporary suspension of the Lower Canadian constitution, Grey ably defended the measure against Mr Roebuck, who had been heard at the bar in opposition to the bill. In 1839 Grey became Judge-advocate, an office which he exchanged in 1841 for that of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but the same year he went out of office with his colleagues. When Lord John Russell became premier in 1846, Grey accepted the onerous post of Home Secretary. During the time of the Chartist disturbances he discharged the difficult duties of his office with vigour and discrimination, this being the culminating point of his career as a practical and administrative statesman. He carried in the teeth of much opposition the Crown and Government Security Bill, a measure providing for the more effectual repression of seditious and treasonable proceedings. The Alien Bill was also under his charge. Owing to Grey's measures in view of the Chartist demonstration in London in 1848, when 150,000 special constables were sworn in, a threatened popular rising was averted. In consequence of the condition of Ireland, Grey carried a measure in 1849 for the further suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Three years later the Russell ministry was wrecked on the Militia Bill. At the general election in August 1847 Grey was returned for North Northumberland, but, being defeated at the election in July 1852, he was elected for Morpeth in the following January. In June 1854 he accepted the seals of the Colonial Office, and on the formation of Lord Palmerston's first administration in 1855 took his old post of Home Secretary. He carried an important measure on the subject of secondary punishments, in which the ticket-of-leave system was remodelled. On the return of Lord Palmerston to office in 1859, after his defeat in the previous year on the Conspiracy Bill, Grey was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; but in 1861 he once more returned to the Home Office. He introduced and carried through several useful measures, including the Prison Ministers Bill. After the death of
Palmerston he continued in office under Earl Russell, carrying measures for stamping out the cattle plague, for amending the Parliamentary Oaths Act, and for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland at the time of the Fenian activity. On the defeat of the Russell-Gladstone ministry in 1866 upon the reform question, Grey's official career closed; but he continued to sit in parliament until 1874, when he finally retired from public life. He died at his seat of Falloden, near Alnwick, September 9, 1882.—His grandson and successor, SIR EDWARD GREY (born 1862), studied at Oxford, became Radical M.P. for part of Northumberland in 1885, and in 1892-95 was Foreign Under-Secretary.