page_title: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
section_title: Elected to Parliament, 1786
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey / Government career / Elected to Parliament, 1786
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Grey (1764-1845), M.P., facing left in blue coat, white waistcoat and tied cravat, powdered hair; red curtain, pillar and sky background signed on the obverse 'HBone' and in full on the counter-enamel 'Charles Grey Esq. M.P. Henry Bone pinxt Augst 1794' enamel on copper oval, 92 mm
context_page_description: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, KG, PC, known as Viscount Howick between 1806 and 1807, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from November 1830 to July 1834.
  A member of the Whig Party, he was a long-time leader of multiple reform movements, most famously the Reform Act 1832. His government also saw the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, in which the government purchased slaves from their owners in 1833. Grey was a strong opponent of the foreign and domestic policies of William Pitt the Younger in the 1790s. In 1807, he resigned as foreign secretary to protest against the King's uncompromising rejection of Catholic Emancipation. Grey finally resigned in 1834 over disagreements in his cabinet regarding Ireland, and retired from politics. His biographer G. M. Trevelyan argues:
  in our domestic history 1832 is the next great landmark after 1688 ... [It] saved the land from revolution and civil strife and made possible the quiet progress of the Victorian era.
  Scholars rank him highly among all British prime ministers. Earl Grey tea is named after him.
context_section_description: Grey was elected to Parliament for the Northumberland constituency on 14 September 1786, aged just 22. He became a part of the Whig circle of Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, and soon became one of the major leaders of the Whig party. He was the youngest manager on the committee for prosecuting Warren Hastings. The Whig historian T. B. Macaulay wrote in 1841:
  At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone, culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.
  Grey was also noted for advocating Parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. His affair with Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, herself an active political campaigner, did him little harm although it nearly caused her to be divorced by her husband.
caption: Grey in a blue coat, white waistcoat and tied cravat, and powdered hair, by Henry Bone (after Thomas Lawrence), August 1794.
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