William Wyndham Grenville
Grenville, William Wyndham, 1st Lord (1759-1834). Prime minister. The third son of George Grenville, prime minister 1763-5, he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he became a distinguished classical scholar. He entered Parliament in 1782 and cast in his lot with his cousin the young William Pitt. Shelburne appointed him chief secretary in Ireland in 1782 and under Pitt he was paymaster of the forces 1783-9. In January 1789 Grenville became Speaker of the House of Commons but he craved a cabinet post and when the Regency crisis was over was appointed home secretary. In 1790 he was elevated to the Lords. Translated to the foreign secretaryship in 1791, for ten years he was responsible for British policy in the French Revolutionary War. In 1801 he resigned with Pitt over the king's refusal to grant catholic relief, but unlike Pitt he determined not to take office again unless the king withdrew his veto. Accordingly he did not return with Pitt in 1804 but formed an alliance with the Foxite Whigs, with whom he served in the ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ in 1806-7. As prime minister, Grenville achieved little beyond the abolition of the slave trade. The government collapsed when George III thwarted their attempt to smuggle concessions to the Irish catholics past his protestant conscience. For the next ten years Grenville and Grey, Fox's successor, led the opposition to Portland, Perceval, and Liverpool. The alliance ended in 1817 when they disagreed over the government's suspension of habeas corpus to deal with radical agitation. Grenville then retired from political life, devoting his remaining years to classical scholarship.
