# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Brand, Henry Robert

​BRAND, HENRY ROBERT, second Viscount Hampden and twenty-fourth Baron Dacre (1841–1906), governor of New South Wales, born at Devonport on 2 May 1841, was eldest son of Sir Henry Bouverie William Brand, first viscount [q. v. Suppl. I], by his wife Eliza, daughter of General Robert Ellice, who was brother of Edward Ellice [q. v.].
Educated at Rugby, Brand served in the Coldstream guards from December 1858 to October 1865, retiring with the rank of captain. From October 1861 to October 1862 he was attached to the staff of Viscount Monck [q. v. Suppl. I], governor-general of Canada. In 1868 Brand was returned as junior member for Hertfordshire, as a liberal, together with the Hon. Henry Cowper; but at the general election of February 1874 both were defeated. At Stroud, where two successive petitions against sitting members had been successful in April and May, Brand stood and defeated a conservative candidate in July, but was himself unseated on petition. In 1880 he contested the seat again, and was returned. From 1883 to 1885 he held the office of surveyor-general of ordnance in Gladstone's second administration. After the Redistribution Act of 1885 he sat for the Stroud division of Gloucestershire, but in 1886 he dissociated himself from the home rule policy of his party, and with W. S. Caine [q. v. Suppl. II] was a teller for the hostile majority (343-313) in the division on the second reading of the home rule bill (7 June 1886). At the ensuing general election he stood for Cardiff as a liberal unionist, but was beaten by Sir E. J. Reed.
Brand did not return to the House of Commons. He inclined to reunion with the followers of Gladstone. On the death of his father in 1892 he became second Viscount Hampden and twenty-fourth Baron Dacre, and inherited the Dacre property of The Hoo, Hertfordshire. In 1895 Lord Hampden was appointed governor of New South Wales, where he arrived in Nov. He acted as a constitutional governor. At the same time questions which required the exercise of influence and discretion arose during his term of office. In Oct. 1896 a conference of colonial premiers at Sydney took the first effective step in the direction of union. In September 1897 the federal convention met at Sydney; and in March 1898, at Melbourne, the commonwealth bill was accepted. Royal assent was not given to the imperial measure until 1900, after Lord Hampden's return; but the crisis of the constitutional movement was met and passed while he was governor. In 1897 he celebrated with fitting ceremony the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. He resigned in 1899, a year before his appointment lapsed, owing to private affairs. He was made G.C.M.G., and took no further part in public life. He died at 5 Grosvenor Gardens, London, on 22 Nov. 1906, and was buried at Kimpton. Hampden married twice: (1) in 1864, Victoria, daughter of Silvian van de Weyer, the Belgian minister in London; she died in the following year without issue; (2) in 1868, Susan Henrietta, daughter of Lord George Henry Cavendish, M.P.; by her he had six sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Thomas Walter, succeeded as third Viscount Hampden and twenty-fifth Baron Dacre. A portrait, painted by the Hon. John Collier, is at The Hoo, Welwyn.
[The Times, 23 Nov. 1906; private sources.]
R. L.