KGStJ, Hon DCL Oxford, Hon LLD Cantab, Hon LLD McGill, Hon LLD Queen's, Chancellor of Order of St Michael and St George, Hon Col 6th bn Northumberland Fusiliers.
Albert Henry George Grey, 4th Earl Grey, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, PC (28 November 1851 – 29 August 1917) was a British peer and politician who served as Governor General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, the ninth since Canadian Confederation. He was a radical Liberal aristocrat and a member of a string of liberal high society clubs in London. An active and articulate campaigner in late Victorian England, he was associated with many of the leading Imperialists seeking change.
Albert Grey was born into a noble and political family, though at birth not in direct line to inherit the earldom. His father, General Charles Grey, was a younger brother of the 3rd Earl, who died without issue. As General Grey was deceased, the titles descended to his eldest living son Albert, then in his forties. Albert was educated at Harrow School before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA and LLM.[1] "His grandfather was the 2nd Earl Grey, who was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834 and, reputedly, the recipient of a diplomatic gift from China of black tea scented with bergamot oil, which became known as Earl Grey tea."[2]
In 1878, Albert Grey entered into politics as a member of the Liberal Party and, after relinquishing a tied vote to his opponent, eventually won a place in the British House of Commons in 1880. In 1894 Grey inherited an earldom from his uncle, the third Earl, and thereafter took his place in the House of Lords, while simultaneously undertaking business ventures around the British Empire as Director of the British South Africa Company from 1898, he experienced a steep learning curve during high tension with the Boers. As administrator in Rhodesia he was directly responsible to Cecil Rhodes for conduct of the colony's business from 1894 to 1897. On his return in 1899 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of his native Northumberland.[3]
Grey was the younger and only surviving son of General Sir Charles Grey—a younger son of former British prime minister the second Earl Grey and later the private secretary to Prince Albert and later still to Queen Victoria—and his wife, Caroline Eliza Farquhar, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Harvie Farquhar, Bt. He was born at Cadogan House, Middlesex. Many members of the family had enjoyed successful political careers based on reform, including to colonial policies; Grey's grandfather, while prime minister, championed the Reform Act 1832 and in 1846, Grey's uncle, the third Earl Grey, as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies during the first ministry of Lord John Russell, was the first to suggest that colonies should be self-sustaining and governed for the benefit of their inhabitants, instead of for the benefit of the United Kingdom.[4]
Grey stood for parliament at South Northumberland in 1878 (at the age of 28). He received the same number of votes as his opponent Edward Ridley, but Grey declined a scrutiny and was not returned.[6] It was not until the general election of 1880 that Grey, the Liberal Party candidate, was elected as a member of parliament (MP) for South Northumberland, a seat he held until it was replaced under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 and he moved to be the MP for Tyneside, following that year's election. In 1884 he wrote to the Manchester-based Women's Suffrage Journal declaring his support for women's suffrage, writing that "[t]here are no questions which receive so little attention, or which, in my opinion, so urgently call for the close and serious consideration of social reformers, as those affecting the condition of women. The possession of a vote by women who are heads of households will lead to the formation of associations and unions for the protection and advancement of the interests of their sex."[7]
Another reform he supported was electoral reform, favoring proportional representation and Single transferable voting. H was active in the Proportional Representation Society of Britain. (At the time of his passing, he was its president).[8] He organized a model STV election in Northumberland in 1885, remarkably using untrained coal miners as staff to conduct it successfully.[9]
Grey in the governor general's office at Rideau Hall, Ottawa
In office
On 4 October 1904 announcement made that King Edward VII had,[13] by commission under the royal sign-manual and signet, approved the recommendation of his British prime minister, Arthur Balfour, to appoint Grey as his representative to Canada, replacing Grey's brother-in-law, the Earl of Minto. (Minto was married to Grey's sister, Mary Caroline Grey.) The appointment came at a good time for Grey, as a series of failed investments in South Africa had left him penniless; a gift from his wife's aunt, Lady Wantage (widow of the Lord Wantage), was used to supplement his salary as governor general.
During the time Grey occupied the viceregal office (1904-1911) Canada experienced large-scale immigration, industrialisation, and economic development, and secured increased independence from the United Kingdom.[4]
It was with Grey's granting of Royal Assent to the appropriate Acts of Parliament that Alberta and Saskatchewan were separated from the North-West Territories to become provinces,[14] The Governor General, writing to the King at the time, stated "[each one] a new leaf in Your Majesty's Maple Crown."[15]
As Governor General, he travelled extensively around the ever-growing country. He journeyed abroad to the Dominion of Newfoundland (then not yet a part of Canada) and several times to the United States to visit President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom Grey developed a strong bond.[4]
Grey often exercised his right, as representative of a constitutional monarch, to advise, encourage, and warn. He desired social reform and cohesion. He put his support behind prison reforms in Canada to provide greater social justice. He was also an advocate for electoral reform, endorsing proportional representation.[16] His past calls for political equality for Irish Catholics were relevant to Canada's internal politics, divided as the population was between Catholics and Protestants, Francophones and Anglophones.[17]
As governor General, Grey also encouraged his prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, to support the Imperial Federation he had long championed, but Laurier was uninterested. Grey suggested the construction of a railway hotel in the federal capital - the outcome was the palatial Château Laurier, completed in 1912.[4]
Although Grey strongly promoted national unity among French and English Canadians, as well as advocating unity within the entire British Empire, his pronouncements frequently raised the ire of Bourassa and the Quebec nationalists. Grey helped plan the tercentennial of Quebec in 1908. This event marked the 300th anniversary of the landing of Samuel de Champlain at what later became Quebec City. The Cabinet agreed to Grey's suggestion to have the Plains of Abraham designated as a national park. this was to be done to coincide with the Quebec celebrations, and Grey believed the official ceremony would promote Franco-Anglo-American friendship. The government arranged for the attendance of the Prince of Wales (later King George V), American and French warships, and a host of visiting dignitaries. The Ligue saw the ceremony as solely a tribute to the Empire. Bourassa and other Quebec nationalists complained that Grey had transformed a day intended to celebrate Samuel de Champlain into a celebration of James Wolfe.
At other times, and unlike future viceroys, the Governor General's influence expanded blatantly into government policy. Grey initially supported Asian immigration to Canada. He opposed the head tax imposed by the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 on Chinese immigrants to Canada. He was invited to visit the province of British Columbia but declined as protest against the exclusionary measures implemented by the BC government under premierRichard McBride. However, following the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, he expressed concerned about the so-called Yellow Peril and worked with the federal Cabinet to explore restrictions on Asian immigration other than the head tax. He was nevertheless appalled by the 1907 anti-Asian riots in Vancouver, organized by BC's Asiatic Exclusion League. Later that same year, he arranged a visit to Canada by Prince Fushimi Sadanaru of the Empire of Japan.[18]
Throughout his tenure as governor general, Grey supported the arts and, when he departed Canada in 1911, he left behind him the Grey Competition for Music and Drama, first held in 1907. Grey also donated trophies to the Montreal Horse Show and for figure skating.[18]
He was a patron of sport, his feelings on health and fitness a part of his broader desire for a reform movement.[18] He supported Canadian football and established the Grey Cup, which is awarded to the winner of the Senior Amateur Football Championship of Canada; it is today presented to the champions of the professional-level Canadian Football League. In 1963 Grey was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame for his contributions to the game.
He gave to the Crown a horse-drawn carriage he had purchased from the Governor-General of Australia, which is still today used as the state landau,[19] and added a study and conservatory to Rideau Hall, the sovereign's and governor general's Ottawa residence; the latter was torn down in 1924.[4]
Grey and his wife were commended for their work in Canada and for their championing social reforms. Laurier said Lord Grey gave "his whole heart, his whole soul, and his whole life to Canada."[4]
Final years
On leaving office in 1911 Earl Grey and his family returned to the United Kingdom, where he became president of the Royal Colonial Institute (now the Royal Commonwealth Society).
He did not retire from public affairs. He lobbied and organized toward several goals:
1. to help those who are endeavoring to fight the slums.
2. to help the worker forward in the path of his natural evolution from the status of worker to that of partner.
3. proportional representation – by "the removal of the disparity between Parliamentary constituencies with 40,000 electors, on the one hand, and on the other, other constituencies with less than as many hundreds." (through creation of equal-sized single-member districts. Earl Grey was also a proponent of PR in the sense of elected representation reflecting how votes are cast. In 1916, he was honorary president of the Proportional Representation Society of Canada and president of the British PR Society.[20]
4. Public House Trust [temperance refreshment houses], which is "a necessary adjunct to the first two items of his programme."[21]
Grey died in August 1917 at his family residence. (On his deathbed, he penned a "stirring" letter to the editor of the London Times on the need to retain the adoption of proportional representation in the Electoral Reform Bill, being debated by British Parliament at the time.)[23]
Family
Earl and Countess GreyLady Sybil Grey & Lady Evelyn Grey Jones, c. 1914
Grey married Alice Holford (d. 22 September 1944), daughter of Robert Stayner Holford, of Westonbirt House (Gloucestershire) and Dorchester House (London) on 9 June 1877 and had five children, one of whom died in early childhood:
Lady Sybil Grey (15 July 1882 – 4 June 1966) O.B.E. married Lambert William Middleton (1877–1941) of Lowood House, Melrose, Scottish Borders, nephew of Sir Arthur Middleton, 7th Baronet and Frederick Edmund Meredith. She was invested as an Officer, Order of the British Empire in 1918, having served as the Commandant of the Dorchester House Hospital for Officers. She was well known for her work with the Red Cross in Russia during WWI, and for her work with tuberculosis sufferers (founding the Lady Grey Society). She was an amateur photographer and filmmaker of note, and recorded village life at Darnick and St. Boswells.[24] After her husband died she sold Lowood House and moved to Burley, Hampshire. They had a son and a daughter.
^The regions that became the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, as part of the North-West Territories, had been part of Canada since 1870. Encyclopedia Canadiana
^Grey, Albert (1 September 1905). "Grey to Edward VII". In Doig, Ronald P. (ed.). Earl Grey's papers: An introductory survey (1 ed.). London: Private Libraries Association.
^Earl Grey's views on minority rights held by Irish Catholics was recorded in a pamphlet "PPA in Ontario" (1894) (available on-line CIHM 25285)
^ abcMiller, Carman. "Biography > Governors General of Canada > Grey, Albert Henry George, 4th Early Grey". In Marsh, James H. (ed.). The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Foundation of Canada. Retrieved 28 December 2010.
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