Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon

“ Our eulogium would be poor indeed, while nine-tenths of the journals of our country are perpetuating his good deeds; while his political integrity has become exemplary to every cabinet in Europe; and millions are about to burst forth in "the loud festivity of mirth" to celebrate the virtue of their popular minister.
Earl Grey married in 1794, Mary Elizabeth Brabazon, daughter of Lord Ponsonby, by whom his lordship has had a numerous family: the eldest son and heir apparent being Viscount Howick, born in 1802. ”

“ In no place, consequently, is an envoy's social circle of greater consequence than in England. A hospitable house with friendly guests is worth more than the profoundest scientific knowledge, and a learned man of insignificant appearance and too small means would, in spite of all his learning, acquire no influence. The Briton hates a bore and a pedant. He loves a good fellow.
SIR EDWARD GREY'S SOCIALISM
Sir Edward Grey's influence in all questions of foreign policy was almost unlimited. ”

“ Thomas Grey was the eldest son of Sir John Grey of Groby, by his wife Elizabeth,—daughter of Richard Widville, afterward Earl Rivers,—who subsequently became Queen to Edward IV. Sir John Grey was killed fighting on the side of the Red Rose at the second battle of St. ”

“ His son John made proof of his age and received livery of his lands in the fifteenth year of Edward II. In 1327 he was employed in the Scottish war. In January 1332, having quarrelled with William le Zouche in the royal presence, he was imprisoned and his lands seized by the crown, but shortly after made his submission, and was restored to favour (Annales Paulini, in Chronicles of Edward I and II, Rolls Ser., i. 335) . Grey was constantly employed in the wars of Edward III's reign ”

“ A Parliament was got together; not without strong suspicion of unfairness; and they annulled the divorce, formerly pronounced by Cranmer between the Queen’s mother and King Henry the Eighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that had been made in the last King Edward’s reign. They began their proceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old mass said before them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who would not kneel down. They also declared guilty of treason, Lady Jane Grey for aspiring to the Crown; her husband, for being her husband ”

“ Some chroniclers say that Edward dashed his gauntleted hand in the face of his young cousin. Others assert that he merely flung a sign to those around him. Either action was well understood. Hastings, the King's faithful servant, and Thomas Grey, his step-son, the affianced of Anne of Exeter, hurried Prince Edward out of his presence to the next tent, where the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester were standing. ”

“ He became famous for his eloquence and his success as a preacher of the reformed doctrines; and in December, 1550, he was presented by the young King Edward to the vicarage of Kendal, but did not enjoy that preferment very long. On the death of his royal patron he ranged himself on the side of the partisans of the hapless Lady Jane Grey, but he does not appear to have been very actively concerned in the futile attempt to place her upon the throne. On the accession of Queen Mary the fires of martyrdom were kindled. ”

“ He held a post at the Viceregal Court at Dublin under Lord Clarendon. Afterwards he held a position at the Foreign Office, and was the Duke of Wellington's private secretary.
GREY, Charles Grey, Viscount Howick, Earl (1764-1845) . A member of the Liberal Party, Lord Grey was a Minister with Fox, and played a great part in the case of Queen Caroline, and also in the affairs of Belgium in 1830. It is to him that England owes parliamentary Reform.
317 GREY, Lady (1775-1861) . Daughter of William Ponsonby and of Louise, daughter of Viscount Molesworth. She married Lord Grey in 1794. ”

“ This practice was, unfortunately, common with great officers of state; but it seemed to be so much beneath the high reputation of Earl Grey, that the public were astonished and scandalised. Few modern events tended more to destroy the popular confidence in eminent public men, and with the people Lord Grey never recovered his popularity. He had been guilty of a trick which ought to have been punishable by parliament, for it was incompatible with all just views of ministerial responsibility. ”

“ To take such a course, it would have been necessary for Grey to submit the matter to Parliament, and while with a large liberal majority his policy might have been endorsed, yet it would have been after such an acrimonious discussion and such vehement protests that England would have stood [Pg 80] before the world “as a house divided against itself.”
Both Sazonof and Sir Edward Grey from their respective standpoints were right. Neither made a single false step in the great controversy. ”

“ In public life, Grey could always be upon occasion bold, strenuous and self-sacrificing; but he was little disposed for the active work of the politician. He was not one of those who took the statesman’s duty “as a pleasure he was to enjoy.” A certain stiffness and reserve ever seemed in the popular eye to hedge him in; nor was his oratory of the kind which stirs enthusiasm and delight. A tall, stately figure, fine voice and calm aristocratic bearing reminded the listener of Pitt rather than of Fox, and his speeches were constructed on the Attic rather than the Asiatic model. ”

“ GREY, HENRY GREY, 3rd Earl (1802-1894) , English statesman, was born on the 28th of December 1802, the son of the 2nd Earl Grey, prime minister at the time of the Reform Bill of 1832. He entered parliament in 1826, under the title of Viscount Howick, as member for Winchelsea, which constituency he left in 1831 for Northumberland. On the accession of the Whigs to power in 1830 he was made under-secretary for the colonies, and laid the foundation of his intimate acquaintance with colonial questions. ”

“ Grey’s instinct divined that the crisis was approaching. Either the king must consent to swamp the House, or the ministry must cease to stand in the breach between the peers and the country. The king, a weak and inexperienced politician, had in the meantime been wrought upon by the temporizing leaders in the Lords. He was induced to believe that if the Commons should reject the mutilated bill when it was returned to them, and the ministry should consequently retire, the mutilated bill might be reintroduced and passed by a Tory ministry. ”

“ When Edward VI was dying in 1553, the Duke of Northumberland gave Hastings orders to raise four thousand foot in Buckinghamshire to secure the succession of Lady Jane Grey. On the king's death he declared for Queen Mary, who made him a privy councillor, master of the horse, receiver-general of the honour of Leicester and of the court of augmentations. During the disturbance of Greenwich in September he foiled an attempt made to steal the queen's horses, and on the 30th led her horse from the Tower through the streets of London, as she rode to Westminster for her coronation. ”

“ The measure of reform concocted by ministers was brought forward on the 1st of March by Lord John Russell, to whom, though not a cabinet minister, it was entrusted, in consideration of his constant and strenuous exertions in this great question. His lordship commenced by stating, that he was about to propose what had been formed in the mind of Earl Grey himself. Ministers, he said, had discarded the notion of complying with violent and extravagant demands, and had framed a measure which would satisfy every reasonable man in the country. ”

“ I pray every night for such a fight; for they like fighting men. Then they'll respect our Government as they already respect us—if we are dead right.
But I've little hope for a fight of the right kind with Sir Edward Grey. He is the very reverse of insolent—fair, [pg I-150] frank, sympathetic, and he has so clear an understanding of our real character that he'd yield anything that his party and Parliament would permit. He'd make a good American with the use of very little sandpaper. ”

“ Her personal determination to send the Prince of Wales to Canada in 1860 and her own visit to Ireland in one of the last years of her reign were cases of actual initiative and active policy. South Africa owed to the late Queen the several visits of the Duke of Edinburgh and the exhibition of her well-known sympathy with the views of Sir George Grey—who, had he been allowed a free hand, would have consolidated and united those regions many years ago and averted the recent disastrous struggle. ”

“ After the homage of the Heir Apparent each Peer of the realm should have followed the traditionary form in the order of his rank and touched the Crown and kissed the King's cheek. This was modified, however, so as to enable each grade of the nobility to perform the function through its representative of oldest patent—the Duke of Norfolk, the Marquess of Winchester, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Viscount Hereford and the Baron de Ros. After this had been done the trumpets once more sounded their acclaims and the audience joined in shouting "God save King Edward." ”

“ It was said that every man who paid taxes, nay, that every man arrived at years of discretion, had a right to vote for representatives. He denied this. The right of the people was to have a good government, one calculated to secure their privileges and happiness; and if that was incompatible with universal suffrage, then the limitation, and not the extension, was the true right of the people. In reply to Earl Grey on this subject, the Duke of Wellington went beyond his usual prudence and reserve. He remarked:—“The noble earl has alluded to something in the shape of a parliamentary reform ”

“ Earl Grey expressed his surprise that the Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst should have indulged in violent invective against the reform bill and ministers, and “dinned their lordships’ ears” with denunciations of the measure, and declarations that the bill, instead of saving, would tend to the destruction of that house and of the monarchy. ”

“ When he wishes to confound Mr. Gladstone, he assaults about "Ugander"; when the concerns of our great Eastern dependency move him to interest, he asks about "Indier"; and he speaks of the primordial accomplishments of man as "readin'" and "writin'."
Sir Edward Grey.
Ugander gave Sir Edward Grey his first opportunity of speaking in his new capacity of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. There are some men in the House of Commons whose profession is written in the legible language of nature on every line of their faces. ”

“ Grey moved, as a resolution of the house, that to employ foreigners in any situation of military trust, or to bring foreign troops into the kingdom, without the consent of parliament first had and obtained, is contrary to law. This motion, however, was negatived; and propositions made in both houses, at a subsequent date, for a bill of indemnity, met with no better success, ministers contending that it would be absurd to indemnify measures which were in themselves both justifiable and constitutional. ”

“ Trouble was on with the Welsh, and a Scotch war began before the other was over. The French king had transgressed Edward’s Gascon possessions and his sailors had landed at Dover, [128] putting a convent and some houses to the torch. Edward’s arms seemed doomed to universal failure; nowhere were his prospects bright. By no means the least serious feature of his position was an empty treasury. With the hope of devising the means of changing his fortune, he summoned to Westminster for the 1st August a Parliament composed of the barons and prelates of the realm. ”

“ Sir Francis Laking and Sir Frederick Treves, the well-known surgeons, and Sir Thomas Lipton, the King's yachting companion upon more than one occasion, were created baronets; the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chamberlain to the King, and General the Right Hon. Sir Dighton Probyn, so long the faithful official of his Household, were given the G.C.B.; Viscount Esher was made a K.C.B. General H. R. H. the Duke of Connaught, brother of the King and Commanding the Forces in Ireland, was made a Field Marshal, and H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, was created a General. ”

“ The Earl of Harewood continued, that he had understood the continuance of Earl Grey in office depended on the power he should receive to carry the reform bill—a power which might be conferred by the creation of peers, or by the act and will of certain lords in seceding from their opposition to the bill. ”

“ But many days had now passed, and instead of the whole of the West Country flocking to him in a body, only the humbler amongst the people had come forward. Not one single gentleman with a following of servants and retainers had placed himself under his standard. The [Pg 266] Viscount was the only man of rank who had joined him since his landing, and he came alone and unattended, in defiance of his father's wishes and conviction, and more from personal desire to be quit of the perplexities of his position than from sympathy for the cause. ”

“ Earl Grey, in his reply, repeated the answers which had already been put forward to the views taken of the bill by its opponents, and denied the charge of having excited the country. On the subject of the threatened creation of peers, which had been so frequently alluded to, his lordship said that the best writers on the constitution admitted that, although the creation of a large number of peers for a particular object was a measure which should rarely be resorted to, yet in some cases, such as to avoid a collision between the two houses, it might be absolutely necessary. ”

“ The Whigs insisted that parliament should continue to sit until a bill be carried through, appointing a regency in case the new king should die before the new parliament could meet—the heir-presumptive, the infant of the late Duke of Kent, being a minor. Accordingly, the ministers having moved in both houses an address simply noting that they would make the temporary provision recommended in the royal message, Earl Grey in the lords, and Lord Althorp in the commons, moved as an amendment, that the consideration of the address should be postponed to the following day. ”