Howick was named after his childless great-uncle, Sir Henry Grey, to whose Northumberland estate of Howick his father, leader of the Foxite Whigs, succeeded in 1808. A highly intelligent, difficult and obstinate boy (qualities that, according to the Whig lawyer Henry Brougham*, he used to ‘great harm’ as an ‘underling’ in his father’s administration), he lacked the warmth and good looks of his next brother Charles, their father’s favourite. It was also Howick’s misfortune that his tall, slender form, ‘carroty hair’ and slight lameness were readily caricatured.
I hardly know whether I ought to be pleased or not at the effect which you tell me this event may produce on my own prospects ... but at the same time I cannot but feel considerable diffidence in myself and consequently a good deal of uneasiness at the idea that there is a possibility of my being called so soon into a situation where so much will be required of me.
Grey mss.
Making his acquaintance in August 1824, John Cam Hobhouse* ‘thought little of him when I first saw him’, but gradually appreciated his ‘original and decisive turn of mind’, liberal opinions and ‘perhaps future distinction’.
My great difficulty is what to say with regard to my political opinions, as there are so few questions of any importance on which one can commit oneself without inconvenience. I fear it is impossible to express an opinion in favour of parliamentary reform in however guarded a manner. The Catholic question it would also I think be dangerous to touch upon. I have seen in canvassing very strong indications of a general feeling that something should be done for the slaves in the West Indian islands. Would there be any objection to my avowing a similar opinion? I think I might also say something in favour of the commercial policy which ministers seem inclined to adopt, though this must also be done with caution, not to alarm the farmers and landlords about the corn laws.
Grey mss.
Initial reports of his reception, ‘statesmanlike’ neutrality and speech, in which he defended the ‘constitution of 1688’ and advocated Catholic emancipation, moderate reform and an abolition of slavery ‘consistent with the rights of property and the well-being of the slaves’, were encouraging.
Howick, whose conduct was monitored closely for Grey by his brother-in-law Edward Ellice*, who had lost his Coventry seat,
I was a good deal puzzled how to vote, as after the House was cleared for the division Brougham said that he should vote against Hume’s amendment and afterwards propose that which Mr. Grattan had intended to move. It appeared to me that it would have been better not to move any, as it was universally agreed that there was nothing objectionable in the address, but if any addition was to be made to it I most decidedly preferred Hume’s as I did not see why the House should pledge itself to take into consideration one or two of the topics he brought forward and not others, as they appear to me to be all of great importance, and as he explained that by the words ‘free trade in corn’ he only meant that the importation should not be prohibited though it might be subject to a duty, I did not think his amendment went to bind us to any particular line of conduct hereafter. Most people, however, were of opinion as you may see by the numbers. We were only 24 for the first amendment and 58 for the second.
Grey mss, Howick to Grey, 22 Nov., reply 24 Nov. 1826.
Pressed by Grey to attend constantly and ‘serve a regular apprenticeship till you have made yourself thoroughly master of all the forms and proceedings of the House’, he formed a close friendship with Charles Wood*, who in 1829 became his brother-in-law. Like Ellice, Howick was one of Grey’s most reliable political informers during his frequent absences from London, and the regular recipient of his advice.
Howick wrote to Grey from Paris in January 1828 for clarification of the confused ministerial situation and, acting on his advice, he refrained from deliberate hostility to the Wellington ministry until after the Huskissonite secession in May.
Howick toured Scotland during the recess.
Whatever objections I may have to the principle on which it is done and the manner of doing it, I am inclined to believe that the result will be the obtaining a more independent body of electors in Ireland and that it is not impossible it may lead to the substitution of a more reasonable qualification than the present technical freehold in England. It seems at least a favourable opportunity of exposing the absurdity of the existing system.
He paired for emancipation, after failing to dissuade George Moore from moving factiously for adjournment, 6 Mar., and quibbled at the Ultras’ delaying tactics before pairing again, 9, 17, 20 Mar. Supporting the franchise bill that day, he found that he could make ‘little or no use’ of his prepared draft and complained that the only part of his speech listened to was his impromptu response to Lord George Cavendish Bentinck. Already ill with a severe cough, he was treated by Sir Henry Halford two days later and was absent from the House until June. Sounded meanwhile as a candidate for Cambridge University (where he went to support the Whig William Cavendish*), he told Ellice that he wished ‘nothing to do with it, as, in the first place I am convinced I should have no chance of success, in the next, though my present seat is not very secure or altogether satisfactory, I should gain little by the change, as it is not likely with my opinions I will remain long in public life without offending such a body of constituents as the senate of Cambridge’. On 2 June he presented a petition for inquiry into the English universities and the established church in Ireland, divided for Lord Blandford’s reform proposals and, ‘quite put out by the inattention of the House’, tried to repeat what he could recall of his March 1828 speech before voting against issuing the East Retford writ. Bored and unwell, he went to Ascot races, 18 June, and attended the Fox dinner at Greenwich on the 27th. He cancelled his planned continental tour on medical advice because of a severely ulcerated throat and returned to Howick, where he read widely, worked on a new speech and resolutions on East Retford and infuriated his father by applying to the duke of Northumberland’s agent for permission to shoot at Long Houghton and Renington. Leaving Alnwick on 16 Dec. 1829 with his sister Georgiana, he attended Rainhill locomotive trials, toured the commercial and manufacturing districts of Liverpool, Manchester, the Black Country and Birmingham and visited Lord Dacre at The Hoo and the duke of Bedford at Woburn, whence he returned to London with Lord John Russell, 3 Feb. 1830.
Cleveland’s adhesion to the ministry, hinted at in June 1829, was confirmed, 12 Jan. 1830, and Howick’s tenure at Winchelsea remained in doubt until a compromise permitting him to sit unimpeded until the general election was effected a few hours before the address was moved, 4 Feb.
At Grey’s request he attended the Whig meetings at Althorp’s rooms on 3 and 6 Mar. which invited Althorp to become leader ‘for one definite object, namely the reduction of expenditure and of taxation’ and resolved not to unite with another party. He recorded that ‘very little was done as a great many of those who were present were irreconcilably adverse to a property tax, without which it does not appear to me that much can be done’.
Undeterred by speculation that Wellington was strengthening the ministry, he divided against reforming Irish vestries, 27 Apr., for information on British interference in Terceira, 28 Apr., and for economies, 30 Apr., 3 May, but he deplored Hume and O’Connell’s repeated attacks on the estimates, 30 Apr. 1830. He attended at Althorp’s, 1 May, and afterwards discussed the currency and political economy, on which Alexander Baring coached him, with Charles Poulett Thomson at Brooks’s. To his relief Grey, who returned to London on 5 May after a ten-month absence, was ‘getting quite as much inclined to oppose the duke as I can be’. He criticized the grants for colonial churches and the Canadian legislature, 10 May, voted for reductions in official salaries, 10, 11 May, and to repeal the Irish coal duties, 13 May, when he was peeved to find that his like-minded colleagues Fazakerley, Milton, Poulett Thomson, Ridley and Michael Angelo Taylor had voted for them on principle, as had been his own intention before hearing Althorp and Acland’s counter arguments. Grey, now contemplating heading a Whig-Huskissonite coalition, was prepared in the event of office to offer him a lordship of the treasury, which pleased him greatly, notwithstanding his preference for the post of under-secretary at the home office. Preoccupied with the hackney coach committee, he voted silently for returns of privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May, and in his journal criticized the gross exaggerations in its mover Graham’s speech, which ‘nine tenths of the public’ would believe. His hostility to the government had increased and he approved Brougham’s proposal to obstruct money votes, although he deplored the precedent it set by ‘taking the only nights in the week the ministers have for public business’. He voted for Jewish emancipation, 17 May, and to abolish the death penalty for forgery, 24 May, 7 June, and held ministers directly responsible for its defeat in the Lords, 20 July. His ‘half-prepared’ speech on Labouchere’s resolutions on the civil government of Canada had been in train since he ordered papers on 5 Mar., and he was bitterly disappointed with his fudged and lacklustre performance, which added nothing to the debate, 25 May. He succeeded in engaging Peel in discussion on the grants for South American missions, 7 June, and consular services, 11 June, and resolved to take the sense of the House on them again. He revised his speech on the currency with Wood and Hammick before speaking against Attwood’s proposals, 8 June, but could add little on depreciation to what Herries and Baring said and so concentrated on their differences on the Promissory Notes Act and pressed for its repeal. On 14 June he voted to cut the grants for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and failed by a disappointing 46-145 to halve that for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels. He wrote afterwards that he had been ‘too busy playing billiards at the Travellers’’ to revise his speech and ‘totally threw away the very best opportunity of making an effective speech ... that year’ by delivering a ‘weak and confused statement’. He considered Huskisson’s ‘excellent’ speech on the sugar duties ‘fatal to the ministry’, 21 June, and rebuked O’Connell for promoting instability by suggesting that the Irish people should apply to the banks for gold, 24 June. He deliberately avoided legal debates, but regretted his inability to speak effectively against the increased recognizances proposed under the libel law amendment bill, 9, 20 July. Speculation about Grey’s appointment to office and a junction with the Huskissonites revived following the king’s death, and Howick was heartened by the increased opposition attendance at Althorp’s, 4 July 1830, when they resolved to go into outright opposition next Parliament should Wellington ‘do no better’. At the meeting he disputed Althorp’s decision to proceed with Robert Grant’s motion on the regency on the 6th without forcing a division and infuriated Brougham, who had a bill prepared. He wrote of the ensuing debacle, in which ‘we were only 93 to 246’, that Brougham’s speech was ‘most clever and amusing though not much to the purpose, certainly not such a display as to warrant his leading us into such a scrape in order to satisfy his vanity by making it’. At the general election he took an interest in developments in Durham and in Northumberland, where Beaumont replaced Liddell, saw suggestions that he should stand for Southwark, Surrey or Hull quashed by his father, and was substituted by Fitzwilliam for his uncle Frederick Ponsonby at Higham Ferrers, which was ‘better than being out of Parliament, though a disagreeable way of coming in, as I cannot bear turning him out’.
Brougham’s speeches following his Yorkshire victory and presumption in speaking for the Whigs in The Result of the General Election and Country Without a Government annoyed Howick, although he conceded the need to co-operate with the disaffected Tories and Huskisson to overthrow the ministry. Despite his previous criticism, he viewed Huskisson’s death on 15 Sept. 1830 as ‘a great loss at the moment’. Aware through Holland and Grey of the obstacle it presented to recruiting Lord Palmerston* and Lord Melbourne, who had ‘little confidence in Althorp and less in HB’, he welcomed Palmerston’s rejection of an overture from Wellington in October and acted afterwards with Graham to test the reaction of the Huskissonites and the Whig hierarchy to Brougham’s moderate reform scheme. The Whigs at Althorp’s backed it, 31 Oct., but in private on 6 Nov. Howick, as his father’s emissary, and Graham agreed that it would ‘never answer’. They sounded Althorp and Palmerston and were instrumental in persuading Brougham next day that to succeed he should move for inquiry only and delay doing so until 16 Nov., three days after the next Whig muster.
Speaking officially for the first time, 6 Dec., he confirmed his 1827 vote against the Canadian waterways grant on announcing its continuation, and warned Hume, who requested returns on colonial pensions, against relying on the editor of the Sydney Monitor’s inaccurate statistics, 23 Dec. 1830. He presented and endorsed anti-slavery petitions, 7 Dec. 1830, and wrote optimistically to Charles that day of their father’s prospects of securing reform and preventing an Anglo-French war, but predicted strong opposition in the Commons after Christmas.
Howick predicted that the popular clamour for reform would frighten opposition into accepting the ministerial bill as an alternative to revolution, and although he acknowledged that the scale of the changes proposed on 1 Mar. 1831 had astounded even the Whigs, he remained optimistic of its success.
The real wisdom ... of this plan consists in its apparent boldness. I admire it because it leaves nothing behind it for future strife or future concession; whereas had it been framed on a contrary principle, and left half of these rotten boroughs in existence, or taken only one Member from each of them, instead of a final settlement, we should have had ... a payment on account ... a short and hollow truce.
He presented favourable petitions from Stockport and Alnwick, 15 Mar. Greville noted that he was now in high spirits and pleased with the popularity of the bill in Northumberland, where the Whigs invited him ‘to propose himself (at the proper time)’ and formed an association ‘for the purpose of bringing him in free from expense’.
For four long years was the miserable question of East Retford ... suffered to hang on, detaining public business, leading to the breaking up of one administration, and greatly weakening another, and all for the purpose of determining whether certain persons had been guilty of an offence which is of every day practice. When we entreated them to institute a similar examination into every borough in the kingdom, and not to waste their time on an isolated case ... we pleaded in vain ... But happily we failed in our endeavours, and I rejoice that we did so because to those two discussions and the repeated exposure of the effects of the system, I attribute much of the feeling for reform which now exists in the country.
He censured Members who had failed to vote to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham yet now claimed to be ‘moderate reformers’, and defended the provisions of the bill.
The 1831 Parliament proved to be a testing and formative one for Howick, who in addition to dealing with the slavery question was charged with preparing and handling bills reforming commerce and the colonial legislatures. He clashed frequently with the Worcester Member Robinson, an expert on the Newfoundland trade, who harried him over the government’s proposals for the legislature, 27 June, when he admitted that ministers had no plans to tackle slavery that session. Admonished by anti-reformers and radicals for failing to demonstrate reductions in his departmental budget, 1 July, he was obliged to defend each sum voted, 8, 18, 25 July, when opposition made the grant to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels their particular target. He revived the Canada revenue bill unchanged, 27, 28 June, and carried its third reading without a division, 19 Aug. Forced to speak on slavery by Burge, whose request for returns he resisted, 17 Aug., he defended his department and the government’s conduct, cited evidence to support his view that circumstances were now right for the emancipation of crown slaves in Mauritius and refuted suggestions that emancipated slaves would become chargeable on the colonies. He presented the Mauritius petition for reduction of the duty on West Indian sugar, 18 Aug., and rejected a request for papers on the compensation paid to Lescene and Escoffery, two coloured free men expelled from Jamaica, but he failed to kill the issue when it was revived in committee of supply, 22 Aug. With pressure to carry the reform bill mounting, he could disguise neither his irritation nor poor knowledge of the fisheries and French rights when Robinson proposed a constitutional legislative assembly for Newfoundland, 13 Sept., forcing Althorp to intervene to suggest the concession of a select committee. He defeated the West India lobby’s request for inquiry into the impact of the Sugar Refinery Act by only 125-113, 28 Sept., and in a bid to regain the initiative and stave off future defeat, he conceded inquiry into West Indian colonies only and sat on the select committee appointed on 6 Oct. He was a government teller for the sugar refinery bill when it was carried (by 130-96), 7 Oct., and (49-12) on the 13th. Advised by Wood to say nothing that might revive the church patronage issue and excite the bishops, he expressed sympathy for but evaded discussion on the Assembly of Lower Canada’s petition complaining of the mode of selecting legislative councils, stating only that his department had the matter in hand, 14 Oct.
He naturally divided steadily for the reintroduced reform bill, but spoke only to express irritation at the time-wasting tactics of its opponents, 11 Aug. He cited the precedent of East Retford in justification of the government’s decision to issue a new writ for Liverpool and claimed that the reform bill rendered further inquiry superfluous and that bribery prosecutions should be referred to the courts, 8 July. When the Irish government was implicated in corruption at the Dublin election, he embarrassed Grey and prompted calls for his resignation by refusing to vote in the majority by which inquiry was stifled, 23 Aug., but he divided with his colleagues later that day against the censure motion.
Briefed thoroughly beforehand by the colonial office clerk Hay, he fended off criticism from Hume and others of his departmental budget, 7, 17, 22 Feb. 1832, persuaded Goderich to refer the contentious issue of Canadian church patronage to the cabinet and discussed schemes to reform the colonial agencies with his colleague Thomas Hyde Villiers* of the India board.
If we cannot agree with him now as to the form of his motion, there will be still less chance of our being able to do so later in the session, when it will be absurd to propose an inquiry and he will therefore if he brings forward the subject at all be compelled to ask the sanction of the House to some distant proposition ... My own situation I feel to be peculiarly embarrassing. Not only do I entertain the strongest opinion that it is the duty of the government and of Parliament to take the earliest possible measures for putting an end to a system which I cannot doubt to be one of the most shocking cruelty and injustice, but I am also publicly pledged to this opinion in a way which must prevent my retracting or disguising it. In a debate last year I expressly stated that if I should be convinced that immediate emancipation would be safe, that it would conduce to the interests of the slaves themselves, I should hold it to be the bounden duty of this country to adopt that measure without the delay of a single day, leaving it to be settled afterwards in what proportion the loss should fall upon this country and upon the colonists. The motion which Buxton proposes does not go one step beyond this ... A division in which Buxton should be on one side and the government on the other would thus be no less embarrassing to myself than I believe it would be injurious to the government. The best way ... would in my opinion be to agree upon the terms in which a committee might be moved for tomorrow, the other to get the motion postponed till next session.
Grey mss, Howick to Althorp, 23 May 1832.
He was party to Althorp’s vain attempt on the morning of the 24th to badger Buxton into agreeing to postponement. His independently minded speech that evening, which Buxton praised as ‘capital and giving such a testimony to the speech of last year as delighted me’, advised against precipitate action, but expressed confidence that inquiry would yield a solution, attributed the lack of progress since 1823 to previous ministerial procrastination, maintained that slave mortality had decreased and sugar exports increased in the crown colonies which, unlike Jamaica, had obeyed the order in council, and recommended the appointment of a committee ‘not to establish the evils of slavery but to plan for its abolition’.
Howick almost certainly colluded with the Conservative Lord Ossulston to secure an unopposed return for Northumberland North at the 1832 general election, when he refused to spend or stand jointly with the Liberal John Culley, and was outshone by Ossulston’s proposer Liddell on the hustings.
He certainly was very ill-tempered and wrong headed. I had myself unavoidable quarrels with him in the House of Commons when he was under-secretary of state and I was attorney-general. Since July 1846 I must say that he has conducted himself in the cabinet with uniform moderation and courtesy. He has occasionally expressed his opinion with vivacity, but without giving just cause of offence and without offending anyone.
Life of Campbell, ii. 208.
Excluded from Lord Aberdeen’s coalition ministry in 1852, he was a constant critic of all parties for the next 40 years and declared for the Conservatives in 1880, when his nephew and heir, Charles’s son Albert Henry George Grey (1851-1917), came in for Northumberland South as a Liberal. He died without issue at Howick in October 1894, predeceased in 1879 by his wife. His will was proved in London, 8 Feb. 1895, by his nephew the 4th earl, to whom he had already made over his estates.