| Grey, Earl | | | | Son of General the Hon Chas. Grey, who brought Prince Albert over from Coburg, and was Queen Victoria's Private Secretary, and nephew of the 3rd Earl Grey, KG, PC, who was the eldest son of the youngest of the accusers who impeached Warren Hastings at the Bar of the House in 1788 and the six following years. Albert Henry George Grey, who is now the 4th Earl, was born November 28, 1851, and was educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he greatly distinguished himself. He began his political career under curious circumstances. It was in 1878 that at a by-election in South Northumberland the Liberal party selected Mr Albert Grey (as he then was) to contest what was generally regarded as a safe Conservative seat. However, Mr Grey's popularity won him a majority of two at the poll over his rival, Mr E Ridley, QC, but as the extra couple of voting papers were found to be irregular, the High Sheriff decided to reject them, and made a double return, each opponent being returned to the House of Commons without having the right to speak or vote. As the Parliament was nearly at an end, the Liberals resolved not to incur the expense of a scrutiny, and the Conservative member was allowed to keep the scat until the dissolution in 1880, when the present Peer was elected by a large majority. In 1885-6 he represented the Tyneside Division of his native county as a Liberal Unionist, but in the latter year he was defeated by a Gladstonian candidate, and did not subsequently seek parliamentary honours. Earl Grey succeeded to the title in 1894. He was one of the original Directors of the BSA Company, and in 1896 he went to Rhodesia as Administrator, filling this high office with considerable success during a troublous period which saw, amongst other things, the settlement of the peace terms with the Matabele chiefs, which put an end to the rebellion of 1896. Lord Grey for a time took an active part in the field against the Matabele, and it is not generally known that he was very nearly cut off by the rebels at the battle of Sepula's Kraal in the Matopos. He returned to England in 1897, and soon after became Vice-President of the Chartered Company, a post which he filled until 1904. He was also Lieutenant of the county of Northumberland, one of the Trustees for the Debenture Holders of the BSA Company, and Chairman of the Charter Trust and Agency, Ltd He not only devoted himself to the more important affairs of the Chartered Company, but took also a very genuine interest in the personal interests of Rhodesians. Among other popular movements he interested himself in having the remains of four prominent Rhodesians who ware killed in Boer War, viz., Jack Spreckley, Fred Crewe, Claude Grenfell, and C J Knapp, removed to Charterland for reinterment hard by the tomb of Cecil Rhodes in the Matopos. But the great philanthropic movement with which Lord Grey has been identified from the commencement is the formation and organisation at home and abroad of the Central Public House Trust Association, the chief aims of which are to promote the higher temperance by the conversion, wherever possible, of the public house from a drinking bar into a house of refreshment for the supply of wholesome food and nonalcoholic liquors as well as of beer and spirits, and to provide such an organisation as will enable the licensing authorities to secure that all new licenses, with their high monopoly values, shall be administered as a trust in the interests of the public, and not by private individuals for their personal gain. In Dec, 1904, Lord Grey left England to occupy a still more important position as Governor-General of Canada in succession to the Earl of Minto. Here his personal charm and sympathetic interest in all those with whom he came in contact, combined with a farseeing appreciation of the requirements of the British Colonies, made him a popular figure, and even in the United States Lord Grey has acquired a popularity which cannot fail to add to the good understanding which has been growing up of recent years between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is an open secret, however, that Lord Grey, as Governor-General, occasionally finds some difficulty in suppressing his strong private views on various public questions, and on one occasion he animadverted so forcibly on the drink evil that the newspapers were asked to omit his remarks with reference thereto. Lord Grey is possessed of a fine gift of speech, and his phraseology is, on occasion, ornate and picturesque. The following brief reference to an after dinner speech on Paardeberg Day at Government House, Ottawa, goes far to explain the secret of his success with Colonials: He wished to avoid the possibility of the celebration of Paardeberg Day being misunderstood. They met on Paardeberg Day not to celebrate any vulgar triumph of race over race. He had lived in Africa and had many Boer friends. Men who slept under the stars, not by necessity but by choice, and who had continual communion with the elemental forces of nature in the silent places of the earth, were generally more interesting than dwellers in cities, whose finer sensibilities were often smothered, and sometimes destroyed, by the dust, hurry, and worry of the Streets. In 1877 Lord Grey married Alice, youngest daughter of R S Helford, of Western Brit, Gloucestershire. His son and heir, Lord Howick, has acted as ADC to Lord Milner, and in June, 1906, married the daughter of the present High Commissioner for South Africa, while his eldest daughter, Lady Victoria Grenfell, is also well known in South Africa, which she visited with her father during the second Matabele War. | Unknown |
