Abstract
George Grenville was a reluctant politician, but once he had committed himself to a political career, he gave it his all, and mastered the details of both Parliament and administration more comprehensively than any of his contemporaries. Horace Walpole described him as ‘the ablest man of business in the House of Commons, and, though not popular, of great authority there from his spirit, knowledge, and gravity of character’. Although he rose to be Prime Minister, he did not enjoy the success which his talents deserved. Caught between his rivalry with his elder brother, Lord Temple, and his brother-in-law, William Pitt, and the impatience of the young George III, his ambitions were circumscribed, and he finished up by being more respected than influential. Born in London on 14 October 1712, the second of five sons and a daughter, his father, Richard Grenville, was descended from a Norman family who had been local landowners in Buckinghamshire since the twelfth century, with an estate at Wotton Underwood. Although he, and several of his ancestors, had been Members of Parliament for Buckinghamshire constituencies, they had never amounted to very much on the national political scene. The family’s importance greatly increased, however, through inter-marriage with the much grander Temple family, their neighbours in Buckinghamshire, with their magnificent estate at Stowe.
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Works consulted
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© 2011 Dick Leonard
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Leonard, D. (2011). George Grenville — Able Premier, Undermined by His Own Prolixity. In: Eighteenth-Century British Premiers. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230304635_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230304635_8
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