George Grenville

George Grenville was born at Wotton House on 14 October 1712. He was the second son of Richard Grenville and Hester Temple (later the 1st Countess Temple). He was one of five brothers, all of whom became MPs. His sister Hester Grenville married the leading political figure William Pitt. His elder brother was Richard Grenville, later the 2nd Earl Temple. It was intended by his parents that George Grenville should become a lawyer.[2] Grenville was educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1736.

Grenville's first act was to prosecute John Wilkes for publishing in The North Briton newspaper an article deriding King George III's speech made on 23 April 1763.[1] Wilkes was prosecuted for "seditious libel" and, after a duel with a Grenville supporter Samuel Martin, fled to France. Wilkes was later elected and re-elected by the Middlesex constituency. He was continually refused admission to parliament by parliament, and proved a problem to several successive governments.

As Britain was trying to recover from the costs of the Seven Years' War and now in dire need of finances for the British army in the American colonies, Grenville's most immediate task was to restore the nation's finances. He also had to deal with the fall-out from Pontiac's Rebellion, which erupted in North America in 1763. Prominent measures of his administration included the prosecution of John Wilkes and the passing of the American Stamp Act 1765, which led to the first symptoms of alienation between American colonies and Great Britain.

Stamp Act

Cartoon depicting the repeal of the Stamp Act as a funeral, with Grenville carrying a child's coffin marked "Miss America Stamp born 1765, died 1766" (The Skulls refer to the Scottish Rebellions of 1715 and 1745)

An English Newspaper on the repeal of the Stamp Act

Main article: Stamp Act 1765

One of the more prominent measures of Grenville's administration occurred in March 1765 when Grenville authored the Stamp Act, enacted in November of that year. It was an exclusive tax placed on the colonies in America requiring that documents and newspapers be printed on stamped paper from London bearing an embossed revenue stamp that had to be paid for in British currency. It was met with general outrage and resulted in public acts of disobedience and rioting throughout the colonies in America.[11]

After a period of active opposition to the Chatham Ministry led by Pitt between 1766 and 1768, Grenville became an elder statesman during his last few years – seeking to avoid becoming associated with any faction or party in the House of Commons.[15] He was able to oversee the re-election of his core group of supporters in the 1768 General Election. His followers included Robert Clive and Lord George Sackville and he received support from his elder brother Lord Temple.

In late 1768 he reconciled with Pitt and the two joined forces, re-uniting the partnership that had broken up in 1761 when Pitt had resigned from the government.[16] Grenville was successful in mobilising the opposition during the Middlesex election dispute.

Grenville prosecuted John Wilkes and the printers and authors for treason and sedition for publishing a bitter editorial about King George III's recent speech in "The North Briton" a weekly periodical. After losing the case Grenville lost favor from the public who regarded the act as an attempt to silence or control the press.[13][17]

Although personally opposed to Wilkes, Grenville saw the government's attempt to bar him from the Commons as unconstitutional and opposed it on principle.

Following a French invasion of Corsica in 1768 Grenville advocated sending British support to the Corsican Republic. Grenville was critical of the Grafton Government's failure to intervene and he considered such weakness would encourage the French. In the House of Commons he observed "For fear of going to war, you will make a war unavoidable".[18]

In 1770 Grenville steered a bill concerning the results of contested elections, a major issue in the eighteenth century, into law – despite strong opposition from the government.[19]

Grenville died on 13 November 1770, aged 58. His personal following divided after his death, with a number joining the government of Lord North. In the long-term, the Grenvillites were revived by William Pitt the Younger who served as Prime Minister from 1784 and dominated British politics until his death in 1806. Grenville's own son, William Grenville, later served briefly as Prime Minister.[13] Grenville is buried at Wotton Underwood in Buckinghamshire[20]

George Grenville's post mortem was carried up by John Hunter who retained specimens in his collection which later became the Hunterian Museum. Subsequent analysis of these specimens published by the Royal College of Surgeons of England suggests that George Grenville was affected by Multiple myeloma at the time of his death.[21]

He was one of the relatively few prime ministers (others include Henry Pelham, William Pitt the Younger, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Bonar Law, Ramsay MacDonald, Neville Chamberlain, Sir Winston Churchill, George Canning, Spencer Perceval, William Ewart Gladstone, Edward Heath, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Theresa May) who never acceded to the peerage.

The town of Grenville, Quebec, was named after George Grenville. The town is in turn the namesake for the Grenville orogeny, a long-lived Mesoproterozoic mountain-building event associated with the assembly of the supercontinent Rodinia. Its record is a prominent orogenic belt which spans a significant portion of the North American continent, from Labrador to Mexico, and extends to Scotland.

In 1749 Grenville married Elizabeth Wyndham (1719 – 5 December 1769), daughter of Sir William Wyndham, and the granddaughter of the Duke of Somerset. Somerset did not approve of their marriage and consequently left Elizabeth only a small sum in his will.[13]

The couple had four sons and four daughters.[22] (One account states they had five daughters.)[13]

1. Richard Grenville (died 1759), died young
2. George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham (17 June 1753 – 11 February 1813), father of the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
3. Charlotte Grenville (c. 1754 – 29 September 1830), married Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet (1749–1789) on 21 December 1771, and had eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood
4. Thomas Grenville (31 December 1755 – 17 December 1846), MP and bibliophile, died unmarried
5. Elizabeth Grenville (24 October 1756 – 21 December 1842), married (as his second wife) John Proby, 1st Earl of Carysfort (1751–1828), on 12 April 1787, and had three daughters
6. William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville (25 October 1759 – 12 January 1834), later Prime Minister
7. Catherine Grenville (1761 – 6 November 1796), married Richard Neville-Aldworth (1750–1825), afterwards Richard Griffin, 2nd Baron Braybrooke, on 19 June 1780, and had four children.
8. Hester Grenville (before 1767 – 13 November 1847), married Hugh Fortescue, 1st Earl Fortescue, on 10 May 1782 and had nine children

• Grenvillite

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Grenville, George". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

• Anderson, Fred (2000). Crucible of War: the Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0571205356.
• Barker, George Fisher Russell (1890). "Grenville, George (1712-1770)" . In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Beckett, J. V. (1994). The Rise and Fall of the Grenvilles: Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, 1710 to 1921. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0719037566.
• Beckett, J. V. "Grenville, George". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11489. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.); cited as GrenODNB.
• Black, Jeremy (1992). Pitt the Elder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521391160.
• Brown, Peter Douglas (1978). William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: the Great Commoner. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0049421455.
• Johnson, Allen S. (1997). A Prologue to Revolution: the Political Career of George Grenville (1712–1770). Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0761806004.
• Lawson, Philip (1984). George Grenville: a Political Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198227557.
• Leonard, Dick. "George Grenville — Able Premier, Undermined by His Own Prolixity" in Dick Leonard, ed. Eighteenth-Century British Premiers (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2011) pp 92–110
• Smith, W. J., ed. (1852–53). The Grenville Papers, being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right Hon. George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries. London.
• Thomas, Peter David Garner (2002). George III: King and Politicians, 1760–1770. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0719064289.