GREY, Hon. John (c.1724-77), of Enville Hall, nr. Stourbridge, Staffs.

Grey, wrote Lord Gower to Newcastle, 17 June 1752, was ‘at his first appearance in the world introduced into bad company by his cousin Lord Ward [John Ward, M.P., a prominent Jacobite] and some females of his family’, but he had now been presented at court ‘by which step he has highly incensed all his old friends against him, and is I believe fully determined for the future to adhere to the family upon the throne’.1Add. 32728, f. 7.

In 1754 and 1761 Grey was elected unopposed on the Whitmore interest at Bridgnorth, where he himself was no stranger: Enville Hall is 8 miles from the borough, and Grey’s sister was married to Richard Acton of Aldenham, 3 miles from it. In Bute’s list Grey was classed as ‘Government’, but does not appear in Henry Fox’s list of Members favourable to the peace preliminaries, December 1762, and after the divisions of 9 and 10 Dec. Fox wrote to Bute: ‘Mr. Grey of the Green Cloth went away and did not vote with us in either division.’2Bute mss. But henceforth he voted with every Administration; was returned as a Government candidate in 1768; and retained his office after leaving Parliament. There is no record of his having spoken in the House.

Grey died 25 Feb. 1777.