DE GREY, Hon. Thomas (1843-1919), of Merton Hall, Norf. and 23 Arlington Street, London

The de Greys, an ancient Norfolk family whose roots reputedly could be traced back to the Norman conquest, had been raised by the law to a peerage in 1780, chief justice of the common pleas William de Grey assuming the title of first Baron Walsingham.1Norfolk Archaeology, 6 (1864), 309-10; Bury and Norwich Post, 17 Jan. 1865; Norfolk Chronicle, 7 Jan. 1871. The Hon. Thomas de Grey’s father, also Thomas, fifth Lord Walsingham, although a dependable Conservative peer, was principally renowned as an agriculturist, devoting his energies to the improvement of the family’s considerable estates at Merton, Norfolk ‘by the application of science and money’, and the breeding of prize-winning sheep and cattle.2Norfolk Chronicle, 7 Jan. 1871; Morning Post, 2 Jan. 1871; Hon. J.A. de Grey, Hit and Miss, a Book of Shooting Memories (1927), 5; Ipswich Journal, 18 July 1865; H. Woods, List of prizes awarded to sheep from the Merton flock (1871); The Farmer’s Magazine, 38 (July 1870), 1; E.J.T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. III 1850-1914 (part 2) (2000), 1673; H.B.J. Armstrong (ed.), Armstrong’s Norfolk Diary (1963), 116, 118, 128. De Grey intended initially to follow a career in the army; however, impatience at the delays in obtaining a commission in the Life Guards persuaded him to follow the path of politics, despite one of his friends later remarking that he ought to have chosen ‘Law rather than Parliament – as Chairman of the Quarter Sessions… he was in his natural element’.3Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine, 56 (1920), 26. A scribbled note amongst de Grey’s papers weighing up methodically the pros and cons of coming forward as an MP, the latter including factors such as expense and ‘Work beyond my wits’, suggested that it was not a decision at which he arrived lightly.4Norf. R.O. WLS LXX/46.

As early as January 1865 it was rumoured that de Grey was planning to come forward as a Conservative candidate at the dissolution, and one month later he made a strident speech at King’s Lynn in favour of the abolition of the malt tax, during which he urged agriculturists that the only way in which they could achieve their goal was by returning representatives supportive of the cause.5Norwich Mercury, 11 Jan. 1865; Norfolk Chronicle, 4 Feb. 1865. His candidature was publicly announced that June, and the local Liberal press lost no opportunity in criticising his youthful inexperience and supposed presumption in seeking a seat at such a young age.6Norwich Mercury, 3, 7 June 1865; Norfolk Chronicle, 10 June 1865. He was heckled at the nomination with shouts of ‘Go to school’ and ‘Puss’.7Norwich Mercury, 22 July 1865. Rumours circulated that the actual purpose of de Grey’s nomination was to dislodge the constituency’s sitting Conservative member, the outspoken Ultra Tory backbencher George Bentinck (who in the event retired due to ill health), whilst the revelation of one of de Grey’s private canvassing letters in which he appealed for the elector’s vote on the grounds that ‘you once told my father that you were a Palmerstonian man, which I hope means an anti-Gladstone man’ caused the Norwich Mercury to question the nature and extent of de Grey’s professed Conservatism.8Norwich Mercury, 10, 14, 28 June, 1, 29 July 1865; Norfolk Chronicle, 17 June 1865; Bury and Norwich Post, 4 July 1865. Nevertheless, on the hustings, where accusations of excessive game-preserving on the Merton estates led to him being pelted with hare-skins, de Grey couched his appeal to the electorate on ‘thoroughly conservative principles’, calling for the repeal of the ‘odious’ malt tax and warning against the intolerant ‘political character’ of Roman Catholicism.9Norwich Mercury, 10 June 1865; Norfolk Chronicle, 24 June, 22 July 1865; Daily News, 20 July 1865. Predicting the schism of the Liberal party between the whig and radical wings, de Grey berated Gladstone’s reform pronouncements of 1864 as heralding the ‘swamp[ing]’ of the present electorate by a ‘numerical majority in a lower condition of life’. His Conservative colleague, William Bagge, declared that ‘seldom had it been his lot to hear so good a speech from so young a man’.10The Times, 20 July 1865. Bagge and de Grey were returned after a riotous poll, ousting the incumbent Liberal Brampton Gurdon, and a rumoured petition against their return failed to materialise.11The Times, 22 Feb. 1866; Bury and Norwich Post, 13 Mar. 1866.

In keeping with his pledge to attend assiduously to the agricultural interest, following support for Hunt’s successful amendment to the cattle plague bill halting the movement of cattle by railway, 15 Feb. 1866, de Grey made his first significant Commons speech during discussion on Fitzroy Kelly’s motion against the malt tax, 17 Apr. 1866.12Previously, de Grey had questioned the president of the board of trade, C.P. Villiers, regarding the pension for a retiring poor law official at Downham Market, 15 Mar. 1866. In a bullish address, de Grey decried the government’s failure to apply the principles of free trade to the agricultural interest and criticised the ‘mode of reasoning’ that grouped the malt tax, an excise tax on home produce, with custom duties levied on imported goods. De Grey’s speech was praised by political friends and foes alike, eliciting compliments within the chamber from Gladstone, as well as from the local press, the Liberal mouthpiece the Norwich Mercury remarking that ‘in style, tone, and manner, it was most creditable’.13Hansard, 17 Apr. 1866, vol. 182, c. 1567; Norwich Mercury, 18, 21 Apr. 1866; Norfolk Chronicle, 21 Apr. 1866. In religious matters, de Grey immediately distinguished himself as a firm defender of the established church, dividing in the minorities against the second readings of the Oxford university tests abolition bill opening masters degrees to dissenters, 23 Mar., and the measure permitting nonconformists to hold college fellowships, 25 Apr. 1866. He consistently voted in the same direction thereafter. De Grey opposed the Liberal reform bill of 1866, later contemptuously describing it as ‘illusory in its general purpose and absurd in its detailed arrangements’, and denounced the ‘unscrupulous demagogues’ whipping up public fervour behind reform, condemning Bright’s extra-parliamentary rhetoric as ‘little, if anything, short of high treason’, and dismissing his Irish land reform proposals as ‘insane’.14Morning Post, 28 Nov. 1866.

At the opening of the 1867 session, de Grey was entrusted with moving the address in a speech which Disraeli praised for its ‘pleasing propriety’, and during which de Grey averred that ‘if the country generally desired Reform, it did not desire Revolution’, 5 Feb. 1867.15Morning Post, 6 Feb. 1867, described it as a ‘well-delivered speech’. He attended the Carlton Club meeting, 28 Feb., at which the plan of household suffrage received general support, although, in describing the events to his father, de Grey stressed that he ‘rather agree[d]’ with those dissonant voices urging the government against making any further concessions from the proposed £6 ratal franchise, being prepared ‘to go out on it if necessary’.16Norf. R.O. WLS XVIII/7/34. Alarmed at the ‘mess’ of parliamentary reform, and increasingly leaning toward secession from the party, de Grey concurred with his father in setting the retention of the dual voting clause (for certain classes of property-owners) as a condition of his support for the government’s measure, adding ‘which is equivalent to going out as it never can pass’.17Norf. R.O. WLS XVIII/7/78; WLS XVIII/7/73; WLS XVIII/7/75, where de Grey described himself as feeling ‘like a traitor in the camp’ at a Conservative dinner at the duke of Marlborough’s residence. However, on the eve of the second reading, de Grey held a private interview with Disraeli – who he described as a ‘beggar… full of words and wits’ – during which the Conservative leader reportedly ‘pretty well… satisfied’ de Grey as to the moderate nature of the measure even without the dual vote.18Norf. R.O. WLS XVIII/7/80. In an about-turn, he informed his father, ‘if his [Disraeli’s] figures are true it will not be an unsatisfactory result for us…I don’t know what to do now but to support the Government so long as they adhere to the compensating clauses, but no longer’, although he added that ‘I still object to what I think is a sacrifice of principle, whatever the result may be’.19Norf. R.O. WLS XVIII/7/80. Disraeli had revealed that less than 115,000 would be admitted to the borough franchise; see also WLS XVIII/7/74. De Grey duly voted against Gladstone’s amendment, 12 Apr. 1867. Two weeks later at a working-men’s Conservative dinner at Norwich, he defended the measure on the grounds that household suffrage provided a firm and final resting place for the franchise.20Morning Post, 27 Apr. 1867. Nevertheless, de Grey warned his audience that ‘it would be necessary to watch the progress of the bill, and see that nothing was introduced into it which might not be fairly accepted by the Conservative party in the same generous spirit’ as they had demonstrated.

During the committee stages of the reform bill, de Grey opposed Ayrton’s amendment reducing the residential qualification from 2 years to 12 months, 2 May, divided in favour of Goldney’s successful amendment restricting the lodger franchise, 13 May, and voted in the minority against Colville’s proposal to reduce the copyhold franchise from £10 to £5, 20 May. He was amongst the 49 members who opposed the proposed disfranchisement of Great Yarmouth, 30 May. De Grey found himself in the opposite lobby to Disraeli in his support of Laing’s amendment to remove one member from all boroughs with populations of less than 10,000, 31 May, although he opposed both Gaselee’s more radical redistribution motion, 31 May, and Laing’s subsequent amendment giving a third MP to boroughs with populations exceeding 150,000, 17 June. After Disraeli’s surprise acceptance of Horsfall’s proposal giving three members to cities with populations exceeding 250,000, de Grey was amongst the sixty-three disgruntled members who opposed the clause’s second reading, whilst, along with a significant number of other Conservatives, he divided against the government in favour of Lowe’s cumulative voting amendment, 5 July. During this period, de Grey served on the select committee reporting on the system of retirement for the non-purchase corps of the royal artillery, engineers and marines, and was a member of the sessional committees charged with examining public petitions presented to parliament, although his attendance records on the latter were poor.21PP 1867 (482), vii. 7ff.; PP 1867 (0.144), lvi. 55, 62; PP 1867-68 (0.107), lvi. 61. On the public petitions sessional committee of 1867, de Grey attended only 6 out of 38 sittings; the following year he was present at 6 of the 32 meetings. In December 1867, de Grey seconded the nomination of the Lord Advocate, Edward Strathearn Gordon, in his unopposed return for Thetford.22Norfolk Chronicle, 23 Nov., 7 Dec. 1867.

Having been listed amongst the minority in a thin house who opposed the third reading of Hardcastle’s church rate abolition bill, 24 July 1867, de Grey reaffirmed his stance when he divided with only twenty-nine others against Gladstone’s compulsory abolition measure at the outset of the new session, 11 Mar. 1868. He opposed Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, later referring to them as an ‘engine of destruction’ devised purely to oust the Conservative government, and was in the minority of 95 to support Palk’s motion on the Scottish reform bill against the proposed increase in Scottish seats being attained by the disfranchisement of English boroughs, 25 May 1868.23Norfolk Chronicle, 21 Nov. 1868. Faced by opposition attempts to talk out the metropolitan foreign cattle market bill, de Grey criticised what he perceived to be ministerial languor in securing the measure’s passage, warning the Conservative administration of the ‘prejudicial effect’ on the impending elections of such apparent indifference to agricultural concerns.24The Times, 8 July 1868; Norfolk Chronicle, 11 July, 19 Sept. 1868; Daily News, 8 July 1868. In a barbed retort, Disraeli rebuked de Grey for such ‘captious remarks’.25Norfolk Chronicle, 11 July 1868. Nevertheless, de Grey continued to urge the government to prolong the session to ensure the bill’s enactment, 16, 24 July 1868. De Grey was returned unopposed for West Norfolk at that year’s general election. He sat in the Commons until his father’s suicide, 31 Dec. 1870, when he succeeded as sixth Baron Walsingham. He served as lord-in-waiting to the queen, 1874-75, and was appointed trustee to the British Museum by Disraeli in 1876.26Disraeli papers, B/XXI/W/106; for de Grey’s disgruntlement over the events surrounding his resignation from the post of lord-in-waiting, see B/XXI/W/96-99; for appointment as trustee, B/XXI/W/100.

As numerous contemporary observers noted, de Grey was a ‘many-sided man’.27Proceedings of Entomological Society of Washington, 22 (Mar. 1920), 42. Primarily remembered as a distinguished amateur entomologist, through extensive tours in North America, Europe, the Caribbean and North Africa, as well as by purchase, he amassed a collection of over 260,000 species of microlepidoptera (small moths) which he donated with his library to the British Museum in 1910.28Ibid., 41-3; The Times, 4 Dec. 1919; K.G.V. Smith, ‘Grey, Thomas de, sixth Baron Walsingham’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]; J.L. Smith-Dampier, East Anglian Worthies (1949), 64; M.A. Salmon, The Aurelian Legacy: British Butterflies and their collectors (2000), 177-8. He was a recognised authority on these insects, producing a number of significant monographs and papers (the first of which was published while he was still sitting in the Commons in 1867), as well as editing the Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine, 1893-1912, and serving as president of the Entomological Society of London, 1889-90.29S.A. Neave, The History of the Entomological Society of London, 1833-1933 (1933), 149-50; Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine, 56 (1920), 25-26; Smith, ‘Grey, Thomas de’. ‘Well known for thoroughness in all his undertakings’, de Grey was a diligent and respected local magistrate, who took up his father’s reins in carefully superintending the Merton estates of more than 19,000 acres, displaying a particular interest in agricultural improvement, and actively supporting the creation of the Norfolk chamber of agriculture, 1866.30Smith-Dampier, East Anglian Worthies, 64; E.J.T. Collins (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. III 1850-1914 (part 1) (2000), 484-86; Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine, 56 (1920), 28; Norfolk Chronicle, 10 Nov. 1866. The breadth, range and style of his public speaking drew frequent laudatory comment.31Nature, 104 (1919), 376; Smith-Dampier, East Anglian Worthies, 64. He was a talented cricketer, who had captained Eton and played for Cambridge University, Norfolk, I Zingari and the M.C.C., as well as one of the best shots of his generation, once bagging a record 1,070 grouse in a day.32Smith-Dampier, East Anglian Worthies, 64; F.S. Ashley-Cooper, Eton v. Harrow at the wicket (1922), 51; De Grey, Hit and Miss, 7-8, 18, 23, 62, where de Grey’s half brother describes him as ‘admittedly the best shot in England, with perhaps one exception, the late Marquess of Ripon’. The Prince of Wales, whom de Grey described as ‘somewhat journalier’ with the gun, was a frequent hunting and shooting partner.33A.E.T. Watson, King Edward VII as a Sportsman (1911), 42; for the visit of the Prince of Wales to Merton in 1865, see The Standard, 16 Jan. 1865, Bury and Norwich Post, 17 Jan. 1865. ‘A man truly kind by nature, generous and sympathetic’, de Grey died without issue, 4 Dec. 1919, after contracting pleurisy leading to heart failure; he was succeeded by his half-brother, the Hon. John Augustus de Grey.34Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine, 56 (1920), 25; N.E. Johnson (ed.), The Diary of Gathorne-Hardy, later Lord Cranbrook, 1866-1892: Political Selections (1981), 293; The Times, 4 Dec. 1919. De Grey’s papers are housed at the Norfolk Record Office.35Although it should be noted that there is relatively little material regarding de Grey’s years in the Commons.