Charles Grey, second Earl Grey, Viscount Howick and Baron Grey, was the Prime Minister who oversaw the Great Reform Act of 1832, which overhauled the country's parliamentary electoral system and was the culmination of two years of intense political crisis.
Born on 13 March 1764, at Falloden in Northumberland, his youth was spent in a manner similar to that of many other members of Whig families: education at Eton, followed by university (King's College, Cambridge) and extensive travels in France, Italy and Germany before finishing off his studies. He became an MP in 1786, for the county seat of Northumberland, and soon made his mark as a supporter of Charles Fox (q.v.). His very first speech was an attack on the government for its commercial treaty with France. His faithful support of Fox's increasingly radical views led him to break from the political outlook of the rest of his family.
His marriage in 1794, to Mary Elizabeth, daughter of William Brabazon Ponsonby, brought him into the Irish liberal establishment. This strengthened his opposition to the draconian domestic law and order measures introduced during the 1790s as a result of fears of revolution in Britain. Unlike some colleagues, including Fox, he was ready to criticise leaders of the French Revolution when he saw them as too extreme, but he also gave prominent support to demands for reform such as annual elections and cuts in the monarchy's civil list. As with many later liberals, he saw failures of government - in the 1790s, often military failings in the war with France - as necessitating administrative and economic reforms.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century he faded out from national politics, spending increasing amounts of time in Northumberland and realising that his House of Commons career was limited by his father's acceptance of a peerage. The smallness of the minority that supported his views on measures such as electoral reform probably also encouraged this distance from politics. He willingly spent much of his time on other pursuits, and in 1807 wrote of the forthcoming parliamentary session: 'We shall have the satisfaction of making what are called good divisions, when the more important business of Fox-hunting, etc., does not prevent'.
In the late 1820s he drifted back into national politics, with increasing talk of him possibly joining the government. He returned to prominence by opposing Wellington's government in 1830, and following the election of that year was the natural leader of the opposition. His track record of radicalism in his younger days, with a relatively quiet more recent past, made him acceptable to a wide spectrum of Whigs and assorted radicals. The fall of Wellington brought him in as Prime Minister.
His first, and main, task was to see some measure of electoral reform introduced. He combined this with a tough line against domestic unrest, organised by Melbourne (q.v.). During the parliamentary struggles over reform, he showed a willingness to do what was necessary to get some measure through, including compromising in some areas, but also taking a tough line with opponents when necessary. He saw the middle classes as massing behind demands for some measure of reform and believed that, one way or another, their power would force change, particularly given the economic difficulties then existing and the possible inspiration offered by successful revolutions in France and Belgium. His job was to manage the process in as moderate and safe a way as possible. This meant limited reform but it did mean forcing some form of reform through, and reform that was radical enough to settle the issue.
When the first Reform Bill fell, he did not resign but instead persuaded the King to call an election, won it by a landslide and then brought in a second bill. Only when this was defeated in the Lords, and the King refused to create sufficient extra peers to see it through, did he resign. Although the King attempted to find an alternative Prime Minister, the widespread support for some measure of reform both inside and outside Parliament, made this impossible. Grey returned to office with the King finally agreeing to create any peers necessary. Faced with this threat, the House of Lords backed down, and electoral reform was achieved. The Great Reform Act, as it came to be known, was a major watershed in the political history of Britain, overhauling much of the Parliamentary electoral system. The electoral franchise was simplified and widened, many old small constituencies abolished and seats granted for the first time to the new industrial areas such as Birmingham.
The next two years, until 1834, showed a rather mixed record as the government suffered from a wide range of splits and personality conflicts, and a lack of a clear programme to drive its actions forward. Grey happily took the opportunity offered by defeats over Irish policy in 1834 to retire from politics. The last eleven years of his life passed quietly; he died at his Northumberland seat, Howick Hall, on 17 July 1845. He had ten sons and seven daughters; his title passed to his fifth son.
Many radicals were disappointed by his time as Prime Minister, particularly as his first Cabinet was largely composed of relatives and peers. Rather than being a radical, he steered a middle course - enough reform to keep the country together and government functioning, but still a long way short of full democracy. The reforms helped to place the country on a much longer road of gradual and largely peaceful change, which did eventually lead to democracy, though he would not have welcomed this culmination of events.
For biographies, see E. A. Smith, Lord Grey, 1764-1845 (Clarendon, 1990) and J. W. Derry, Charles, Earl Grey: Aristocratic Reformer (Blackwell, 1992).
Dr Mark Pack
Mark Pack works in the Liberal Democrats' campaigns and elections department. In 1995 he completed a PhD at the University of York on the nineteenth-century English electoral system.
