RARE “Great Famine Of Ireland\" Sir George Grey Hand Signed Free Frank For Sale

Up for sale the "2nd Baronet" Sir George Grey Hand Signed Free Frank.

ES-3200

Sir

George Grey, 2nd Baronet, PC (11

May 1799 – 9 September 1882) was a British Whig politician. He held office under four John Russell, Lord

Aberdeen, and Lord

Palmerston, and notably served three times as Home Secretary. Grey was the only son of Sir George Grey, 1st

Baronet, third son of Charles Grey, 1st Earl

Grey, and younger brother of Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl

Grey. His mother was Mary Whitbread, daughter of Samuel Whitbread.

Grey was educated privately and at Oriel College, Oxford.

Originally intending to become a priest, he instead chose law as his

profession, and was called to the bar in 1826. He began a successful legal

practice, but soon turned to politics. Grey was elected to parliament as a Whig

for Devonport in 1832, and quickly made his mark in the House of Commons. He did

not hold office in the Whig administration of his uncle Lord Grey, Prime Minister in 1834, he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. The

government fell in December of that year, but returned to power in May 1835,

when Grey resumed the post of Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies (succeeding William Ewart Gladstone).

He retained this office until 1839, when he was made Judge

Advocate General. The same year Grey was also admitted to the Privy

Council. He was then briefly Chancellor

of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1841, with a seat in the cabinet

for the first time. However, the Whigs were defeated in the general

election of that year. The Whigs returned to power in July 1846

under Lord John Russell,

who appointed Grey Home Secretary, the first

of his three spells in this position. In 1846, Grey, "himself a zealous

advocate of hydropathy" succeeded in getting passed The Baths and

Washhouses Act, which promoted the voluntary establishment of public baths and

washhouses in England and Wales. A series of statutes followed, which became

known collectively as "The Baths and Wash-houses Acts 1846 to 1896". This was an important milestone in the

improvement of sanitary conditions and public health in those times. He decided to leave his seat at Devonport,

partly owing to the baths scandal, returning instead for his native Northumberland North in an 1847 by-election, from the

family seat at Fallodon, which he had recently inherited from his uncle, Henry

Grey. The new baronet sat throughout the parliament in active support of Lord

John Russell, until the collapse of the ministry after the scandal of the

Durham Letter, and controversial Ecclesiastical Titles bull. Traditional Whigs

were Protestant, among them Grey, but the liberality of authorising a catholic

hierarchy changed the nature of party politics. Grey's first tenure at

the Home Office notably saw him deal with relief efforts to

the victims of the Great Famine of Ireland and

trying to subdue the Irish rebellion of

1848. The latter year also saw the peak of the Chartist movement, which staged a massive rally in London in April. In 1847, Grey had left his old

constituency in Devonport. He remained Home Secretary until the 1852 general

election, when, despite enjoying widespread popularity, he lost his

seat. Grey remained out of parliament until January 1853, when he was returned

for Morpeth.

He at first refused to join the coalition government of Lord

Aberdeen, but in June 1854 he accepted the post of Colonial

Secretary. The coalition fell in February 1855, and the Whigs

returned to office under Lord

Palmerston. Grey was appointed to his old office of Home Secretary, which he retained until the government

resigned in February 1858. the Earl of

Derby which took office only lasted until June the following

year, when Palmerston again became Prime Minister. Grey was now appointed Chancellor

of the Duchy of Lancaster, but in 1861 he became Home Secretary for

the third time. The government fell in 1866, and Grey was not to hold office

again. Before the 1874 general

election, he was overlooked as the Liberal candidate for

Morpeth in favour of miners' leader Thomas Burt. This marked the end of Grey's public life and he

spent the remainder of his life in retirement at his Fallodon estate in

Northumberland. In 1873 Grey took his grandson, Edward on a tour of Scotland.

The train they were travellers in, pulled in at the tiny village halt of

Kingussie in the Highlands, where they were met on the platform by none other

than William Gladstone.