Charles Grey held several titles during his life: he was the second Earl, but also was called Baron Grey between 1801 and 1806, and between 1806-07 was Viscount Howick. He was born on 13 March 1764 at Falloden in Northumberland.
Grey had a typical aristocratic education at Eton and Cambridge. When he was 22 he was elected as one of the Members of Parliament for Northumberland. He gravitated towards the circle of Charles James Fox, the politician-playwright Richard Sheridan and the Prince of Wales. Grey soon became prominent among the aristocratic Whig group that provided the political opposition to the conservative government of William Pitt. In 1789 the French Revolution revived popular political agitation and Grey was one of the young Whig aristocrats who formed the Society of the Friends of the People in 1792 to encourage demands for parliamentary reform. These activities were considered radical at the time but since they were followed by the outbreak of war with revolutionary France in 1793, they split the Whig Party. Fox carried his pro-French sympathies to the extreme and turned his following into an impotent and discredited minority. On one occasion the entire opposition to Pitt's government went home in the same cab.
In 1797 Grey introduced a parliamentary Reform Bill which was defeated heavily and for some years afterward Fox's Whigs virtually withdrew from parliamentary life. In 1794 Grey married Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby, the daughter of a leading Irish liberal family. This strengthened his sympathies with the cause of Catholic Emancipation; however, it weakened his zeal for politics. Grey was a devoted husband with a family which numbered 15 children by 1819. In 1801 his bachelor uncle Sir Henry allowed Grey to use Howick as his permanent residence.
It took four days to travel from Howick to London, and Grey was reluctant to go south for the parliamentary sessions. Also, Grey had become much less politically extreme. His criticism of the government for resuming the war with France in 1803 was much milder than that of Fox.
When Grenville formed the "Ministry of All the Talents" in 1806, Grey became First Lord of the Admiralty. When Fox died the same year, Grey took his place as Foreign Secretary and leader of the Foxite Whigs. The dismissal of the ministry in 1807 (over a disagreement with the King about Catholic Emancipation) left Grey with a distaste for office. His political "disinterestedness" was increased by the loss of his seat for Northumberland as a result of his Catholic sympathies and his elevation to the House of Lords in 1807.
In 1810-12 the Prince of Wales became regent and initiated a series of political negotiations to replace the government. Grey and Grenville refused to accept anything less than complete power. Consequently Lord Liverpool was appointed as Prime Minister. Between 1815 and 1830 Grey was patron, rather than leader, of the Whig opposition. He maintained that Catholic Emancipation was a condition of any Whig government but accepted the fact that parliamentary reform must wait until there was solid support for it in the country. His conclusion was that the task of a Whig ministry would be to produce a measure of reform large enough to satisfy respectable opinion and yet conservative enough to preserve the basic principles of the aristocratic constitution.
In 1830 Grey was asked to form a ministry by the new king, William IV. Catholic Emancipation had been granted in 1829 but had destroyed the last cohesion of the Tory party. The collapse of Wellington's ministry brought Grey into office with popular backing to introduce parliamentary reform. The extent of the changes proposed in the Bill of 1831 staggered even his own supporters and it needed a general election and the coercion of the House of Lords before the Bill ultimately passed into law. Grey had misjudged the temper of both Houses of Parliament and came into conflict with William IV when he had to ask for enough new peers to be created to carry the Bill.
A wave of popular enthusiasm sustained him during the long battle for reform in 1831-32 and returned a vast Whig majority to the House of Commons in 1833. The Reform Act of 1832 was a major achievement for the Whig Party. However, the legislation that the Whigs saw as a conservative measure was regarded by many of his new supporters as a springboard for further extensive changes in church and state. The strains of the new era produced quarrels and resignations in his Cabinet, and Grey retired from politics two years later. He died on 17 July 1845 at Howick.
Content last modified April 1997; links last added 20 February 2000