His foreign policy kept Britain free from European wars and improved relations with the United States after the strain during the American Civil War.[citation needed]
Leveson-Gower went to Paris for a short time under his father, and in 1836 was elected to Parliament as Whig MP for Morpeth. For a short time (1840-1) he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Lord Melbourne's ministry. From 1841 until his father's death in 1846, when he succeeded to the title, he sat for Lichfield.[2]
When Lord Aberdeen formed his coalition government at the end of 1852, Granville became first Lord President of the Council, and then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1854). Under Lord Palmerston (1855) he was again President of the Council.[2] His interest in education (a subject associated with this office) led to his election (1856) as chancellor of the University of London, a post he held for thirty-five years; and he was a prominent champion of the movement for the admission of women, and also of the teaching of modern languages.[2]
From 1855 Lord Granville led the Liberals in the Upper House, both in office and, after Palmerston's resignation in 1858, in opposition. In 1856 he was head of the British mission to Tsar Alexander II of Russia's coronation in Moscow. In June 1859 Queen Victoria asked him to form a ministry, but he was unable to do so, and Palmerston again became Prime Minister, with Russell as Foreign Secretary and Granville once again as President of the Council.[2]
He retained his office when, on Palmerston's death in 1865, Lord Russell (now a peer) became Prime Minister and took over the leadership in the House of Lords. Granville, now an established Liberal leader, was made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.[2]
During the American Civil War, Granville was non-interventionist along with the majority of Palmerston's cabinet. His memorandum against intervention in September 1862 drew Prime Minister Palmerston's attention. The document proved to be a strong reason for Palmerston's refusal to intervene and for Britain's relations with the North to remain basically stable for the rest of the conflict despite tensions.[10] From 1866 to 1868, he was in opposition, but in December 1868 he became Colonial Secretary in Gladstone's first ministry. His tact was invaluable to the government in carrying the Irish Church and Land Bills through the House of Lords. On 27 June 1870, on Lord Clarendon's death, he became foreign secretary.[2] With war clouds gathering in Europe, Granville worked to authorise preliminary talks to settle American disputes and in appointing the British High Commission to sail to the United States and negotiate the most comprehensive treaty of the nineteenth century in Anglo-American relations with an American commission in Washington.[citation needed]
Lord Granville's name is mainly associated with his career as foreign secretary (1870–1874 and 1880–1885). It brought better relations with the United States, and it was innovative in supporting Gladstone's wish to settle British-American fisheries and Civil War disputes over the Confederate cruisers built in Britain, like the Alabama, through international arbitration in 1872. For example, the long-standing San Juan Island Water Boundary Dispute in Puget Sound, which had been left ambiguous in the Oregon Treaty of 1846 to salve relations and get a treaty sorting out the primary differences, was arbitrated by the German Emperor also in 1872. In putting British-American relations up to the world as a model for how to resolve disputes peacefully, Granville helped create a breakthrough in international relations.[11]
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 broke out within a few days of Lord Granville's quoting in the House of Lords (11 July 1870) the opinion of the permanent under-secretary (Edmund Hammond) that "he had never known so great a lull in foreign affairs." Russia took advantage of the situation to denounce the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, and Lord Granville's protest was ineffectual. In 1871 an intermediate zone between Asiatic Russia and Afghanistan was agreed on between him and Shuvalov; but in 1873 Russia took possession of the Khanate of Khiva, within the neutral zone, and Lord Granville had to accept the aggression[2] (See also: The Great Game).
When the Conservatives came into power in 1874, his part for the next six years was to criticise Disraeli's "spirited" foreign policy, and to defend his own more pliant methods. He returned to the foreign office in 1880, only to find an anti-British spirit developing in German policy which the temporising methods of the Liberal leaders were generally powerless to deal with.[2]
Lord Granville failed to realise in time the importance of the Angra Pequena question in 1883–1884, and he was forced, somewhat ignominiously, to yield to Bismarck over it. Finally, when Gladstone took up Home Rule for Ireland, Lord Granville, whose mind was similarly receptive to new ideas, adhered to his chief (1886), and gave way to Lord Rosebery when the latter was preferred to the foreign office; the Liberals had now realised that they had lost ground in the country by Lord Granville's occupancy of the post.[12] He went into Colonial Office service for six months, and in July 1886 retired from public life.[2]
He married, as his second wife, Castilia Rosalind Campbell (or Castalia), daughter of Walter Frederick Campbell,[13] on 26 September 1865; their children were:
Lady Victoria Alberta Leveson-Gower (14 April 1867 – 11 February 1953), married Harold Russell (son of Lord Arthur John Edward Russell) on 8 September 1896. They had three children:
Elizabeth Frances Russell (6 July 1899 – 1986)
Rachel Georgiana Russell (28 January 1903 – 1 December 1995)
Anthony Arthur Russell (2 October 1904 – 7 April 1978)
Lady Sophia Castelia Mary Leveson-Gower (25 February 1870 – 22 March 1934), married Hugh Morrison on 16 August 1892. They had two children:
Granville died in London on 31 March 1891 and was succeeded in his peerages by his elder son, who became the 3rd Earl. He was buried in the family vault in the churchyard of St Michael and St Wulfad, Stone, Staffordshire.
Legacy
Earl Granville (1815–1891), Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports by Henry Jamyn Brooks (1891)
Granville was the name of the present Canadian city of Vancouver from 1870 until its incorporation in 1886. Granville Street is a major north–south thoroughfare in the city.
Granville house at Epsom College was named in his honour.
Granville is also the name of a suburb and train station in Sydney. It was named in 1880.[14]
Granville Road, Granville Square and Granville Circuit in Hong Kong are named after him.[15]
Cecil, Algernon. British Foreign Secretaries 1807-1916 (1927) pp 255–273. online
Chamberlain, Muriel E. "Gower, Granville George Leveson-, second Earl Granville (1815–1891)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 20 Feb 2012
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