William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville

Grenville was the son of Whig prime minister George Grenville. His mother Elizabeth was the daughter of Tory statesman Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet. He had two elder brothers Thomas and George—he was thus uncle to the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

He was also related to the Pitt family by marriage; William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, had married his father's sister Hester, and thus the younger Grenville was the first cousin of William Pitt the Younger.

Grenville was educated at Eton College; Christ Church, Oxford; and Lincoln's Inn.[1]

Grenville entered the House of Commons in February 1782, as member for the borough of Buckingham.[2] He soon became a close ally of the Prime Minister, his cousin William Pitt the Younger. In September he became secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who at the time was his brother George. He left the House the following year, and served in the government as Paymaster of the Forces from 1784 to 1789. In 1789 he served briefly as Speaker of the House of Commons before he entered the cabinet as Home Secretary and resigned his other posts.[2] He became Leader of the House of Lords when he was raised to the peerage the next year as Baron Grenville, of Wotton under Bernewood in the County of Buckingham.[3] The next year, in 1791, he succeeded the Duke of Leeds as Foreign Secretary. Grenville's decade as Foreign Secretary was a dramatic one, seeing the Wars of the French Revolution. During the war, Grenville was the leader of the party that focused on the fighting on the continent as the key to victory, opposing the faction of Henry Dundas which favoured war at sea and in the colonies. Grenville left office with Pitt in 1801 over the issue of George III's refusal to assent to Catholic emancipation.[4]

Grenville did part-time military service at home as Major in the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry cavalry in 1794 and as Lieutenant-Colonel in the South Buckinghamshire volunteer regiment in 1806.[5]

In his years out of office, Grenville became close to the opposition Whig leader Charles James Fox, and when Pitt returned to office in 1804, Grenville, siding with Fox, did not take part.[4] Following Pitt's death in 1806, Grenville became the head of the "Ministry of All the Talents", a coalition between Grenville's supporters, the Foxite Whigs, and the supporters of former Prime Minister Lord Sidmouth, with Grenville as First Lord of the Treasury and Fox as Foreign Secretary as joint leaders. Grenville's cousin William Windham served as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and his younger brother, Thomas Grenville, served briefly as First Lord of the Admiralty. The Ministry ultimately accomplished little, failing either to make peace with France or to accomplish Catholic emancipation (the later attempt resulting in the ministry's dismissal in March, 1807). It did have one significant achievement, however, in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.[4]

In the years after the fall of the ministry, Grenville continued in opposition, maintaining his alliance with Lord Grey and the Whigs, criticising the Peninsular War and, with Grey, refusing to join Lord Liverpool's government in 1812. In the post-war years, Grenville gradually moved back closer to the Tories, but never again returned to the cabinet. In 1815 he separated from his friend Charles Grey and supported the war policy of Lord Liverpool. In 1819, when the marquess of Lansdowne brought forward his motion for an inquiry into the causes of the distress and discontent in the manufacturing districts, Grenville delivered a speech advocating repressive measures.[4] His political career was ended by a stroke in 1823. Grenville also served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1810 until his death in 1834.[6]

Historians find it hard to tell exactly what separate roles Pitt, Grenville, and Dundas played in setting war policy with France, but agree that Grenville played a major role at all times until 1801. The consensus of scholars is that war with France presented an unexpected complex of problems. There was a conflict between secular ideologies, the conscription of huge armies, the new role of Russia as a continental power, and especially the sheer length and cost of the multiple coalitions. Grenville energetically worked to build and hold together the Allied coalitions, paying suitable attention to smaller members such as Denmark and Sardinia. He negotiated the complex alliance with Russia and Austria. He hoped that with British financing they would bear the brunt of ground campaigns against the French. Grenville's influence was at the maximum during the formation of the Second Coalition. His projections of easy success were greatly exaggerated, and the result was another round of disappointment. His resignation in 1801 was due primarily to the king's refusal to allow Catholics to sit in Parliament.[7]

A caricature of Saartjie Baartman, Lord Grenville, and Richard Sheridan by William Heath

Dropmore House was built in the 1790s for Lord Grenville. The architects were Samuel Wyatt and Charles Tatham. Grenville knew the spot from rambles during his time at Eton College, and prized its distant views of his old school and of Windsor Castle. On his first day in occupation, he planted two cedar trees. At least another 2,500 trees were planted. By the time Grenville died, his pinetum contained the biggest collection of conifer species in Britain. Part of the post-millennium restoration is to use what survives as the basis for a collection of some 200 species.[8]

Lord Grenville married the Honourable Anne, daughter of Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford, in 1792. The marriage was childless. He died in January 1834, aged 74, when the barony became extinct. Lady Grenville died in June 1863.[9]

• Lord Grenville – First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords
• Charles James Fox – Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons
• The Lord Erskine – Lord Chancellor
• The Earl Fitzwilliam – Lord President of the Council
• The Viscount Sidmouth – Lord Privy Seal
• The Earl Spencer – Secretary of State for the Home Department
• William Windham – Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
• Viscount Howick – First Lord of the Admiralty
• Lord Henry Petty – Chancellor of the Exchequer
• The Earl of Moira – Master-General of the Ordnance
• The Lord Ellenborough – Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench

Changes

• September 1806 – On Fox's death, Lord Howick succeeds him as Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. Thomas Grenville succeeds Howick at the Admiralty. Lord Fitzwilliam becomes Minister without Portfolio, and Lord Sidmouth succeeds him as Lord President. Lord Holland succeeds Sidmouth as Lord Privy Seal.

• Ehrman, John. The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (1969); The Reluctant Transition (1983); The Consuming Struggle (1996).
• Furber, Holden. Henry Dundas: First Viscount Melville, 1741–1811, Political Manager of Scotland, Statesman, Administrator of British India (Oxford UP, 1931). online
• Jupp, Peter. "Grenville, William Wyndham, Baron Grenville (1759–1834)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2009) https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/11501
• Jupp, P. (1985), Lord Grenville, Oxford University Press
• Leonard, Dick. "William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville—Not Quite 'All the Talents'." in Leonard, ed, Nineteenth-Century British Premiers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 38-54.
• McCahill, Michael W. "William, First Lord Grenville." (2003) 22#1 pp 29-42
• Mori, Jennifer. Britain in the Age of the French Revolution: 1785-1820 (2014).
• Negus, Samuel D. "'Further concessions cannot be attained': the Jay-Grenville treaty and the politics of Anglo-American relations, 1789–1807." (Texas Christian University, 2013. PhD thesis) online
• Sack, James J. The Grenvillites, 1801–29: Party Politics and Factionalism in the Age of Pitt and Liverpool (U. of Illinois Press, 1979)
• Sherwig, John M. "Lord Grenville's plan for a concert of Europe, 1797-99." Journal of Modern History 34.3 (1962): 284–293.
• Temperley, Harold and L.M. Penson, eds. Foundations of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902) (1938), primary sources online
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Grenville, William Wyndham Grenville, Baron". Encyclopædia Britannica. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 581–582.
• Baynes, T. S., ed. (1875–1889). "William Wyndham Greenville, Lord Grenville" . Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
• Barker, George Fisher Russell (1890). "Grenville, William Wyndham" . In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

• Media related to William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville at Wikimedia Commons
• More about William Wyndam Grenville, Lord Grenville on the Downing Street website.