Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/156

 sitting at Crockford's, and was one of the best whist players of his time. In Paris he was called le Wellington des joueurs. On 3 May 1833 he was created Earl Granville and Baron Leveson of Stone. He died 8 Jan. 1846 in Bruton Street, Mayfair, and was buried at Stone in Staffordshire, He was in early life a follower of Pitt and Canning, but in 1832 was a staunch whig, and came over from Paris to vote for the Reform Bill. He married, on 24 Dec. 1809, Lady Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish, second daughter of William, fifth duke of Devonshire, who survived him, by whom he had three sons,of whom the eldest, Granville George, second Earl Granville, is separately noticed, and two daughters. He left 160,000l.

 LEVESON-GOWER, GRANVILLE GEORGE, second (1815–1891), statesman, eldest son of lord, first earl Granville [q. v,], by his wife, Lady Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of William, fifth duke of Devonshire, was born at Great Stanhope Street, Mayfair, London, on 11 May 1816 (Gent. Mag. 1815, pt.i. p.466). He bore in youth the courtesy title of Lord Leveson. He was educated at Eton, where his name first appears in the school lists for 1829, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. on 14 Feb. 1839. In 1835 he was for a short time attaché at the British embassy in Paris under his father, and in 1836, and again at the general election of 1837, he was returned to parliament in the whig interest for Morpeth. His first speech was made in 1836 on the quadruple alliance. He moved the address in November 1837, but only spoke once again, on the Tithes Bill, in the House of Commons. In 1840 he became under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and resigned with the other members of the Melbourne administration in 1841. At the general election he was returned for Lichfield. By the death of his father, in 1846, he succeeded to the peerage, and being a strong freetrader made his first speech in the House of Lords on the abolition of the corn laws. He was appointed by the prime minister, Lord John Russell, master of the buckhounds in July 1816, resigned this post at the end of the year, and became an unpaid commissioner of railways; was then made vice-president of the board of trade in 1848 and also paymaster of the forces, and was admitted to the cabinet in the autumn of 1851. On 20 Dec, 1851, when Lord Palmerston left the foreign office, he was gazetted his successor. He held the office until the Russell ministry fell in 1852. Circumstances were against him. He enjoyed office without power, and was unpopular, because he seemed to have supplanted the popular Palmerston, who was supposed to have been overthrown by the influence of foreign cabinets. The date of his resignation was 21 Feb. It was almost twenty years before he returned to the foreign office.

In December of the same year, in the administration of Lord Aberdeen, he accepted the office of president of the council, and held it until, in the ministerial rearrangement of June 1854, he was rather unceremoniously ousted, and accepted the inferior position of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (see, Life of Lord John Russell, ii, 222; Grenville Memoirs, 3rd ser. vol. i.) From 1855 he was entrusted with the leadership of the House of Lords when the liberals were in office.

Meantime he had taken a very prominent part in the promotion of the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1850 he was appointed vice-president of the royal commission to which the arrangements for the exhibition were entrusted, and he was one of the deputation of commissioners which visited France in August 1851, on the invitation of the municipality of Paris, to celebrate the success of the exhibition. He spoke French like a Parisian, with a slight court accent, recalling the ancien régime {La Liberté, 1 April 1891), and his personal influence did much to promote the entente cordiale between England and France, which grew steadily from that time (see, Life of Prince Consort, ii. 388).

In 1856 he was despatched to St. Petersburg as envoy extraordinary, to represent the queen at the coronation of Alexander II at Moscow on 7 Sept. When Lord Derby resigned, on 11 June 1850, the queen, embarrassed by the rival ambitions of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, sent for Lord Granville, who, in attempting to form an administration, obtained Palmerston's conditional support (see, Life of Palmerston, ed. 1876, ii. 165), but finding Lord John impracticable abandoned the attempt on 12 June, and accepted the office of lord president of the council in Palmerston's ministry (see , Life of Prince Contort, iv. 453; , Lord John Russell, ii. 306; Times, 12 June 1859). On the death of Palmerston (October 1865} his claims to succeed him as premier were discussed, but