GRANT, Robert (1780-1838).

Grant, a commissioner of bankrupts from 1815, was fatter and marginally less indolent than his elder brother Charles, who relied on him for moral support in his frequent moments of indecision, but he remained in his political shadow. Margaret Macaulay, Recollections, 230; Lord Teignmouth, Reminsicences, i. 298; Macaulay Letters, ii. 328. On his return for Elgin Burghs on the interest of Colonel Francis Grant*, acting chief of his clan, in 1818, one observer described him as ‘a good declaimer’ who was unlikely to succeed in the Commons. Life of Campbell, i. 351. When George III’s death in January 1820 precipitated a dissolution, he initially held little hope of being retained in his seat, as it was Lord Kintore’s turn to nominate the Member; but he declined an offer of government backing elsewhere from Lord Melville, the Liverpool ministry’s Scottish manager, preferring to rely on the ‘moral certainty’ of his eventual return for Inverness Burghs, where his father, whom he consulted, was cultivating an interest. He was anxious for an early privy council decision on the disputed municipal sett of Inverness, which was currently disfranchised, to advance his cause, but nothing could be immediately done. When an unexpected threat arose to his interest, Kintore considered adopting Grant as his candidate for the Elgin district, but this ended in smoke. NAS GD23/6/745/123, 127; GD51/1/198/17/14, 15; 198/29/9; 51/5/749, pp. 177-9. Grant continued to press the lord advocate to intervene to secure a ‘final resolution’ of the Inverness case, and in August 1822 the privy council authorized the re-election of the old council and so restored the burgh’s electoral voice, which virtually ensured his return to the next Parliament. NAS GD23/6/573/1, 2. In late October 1822 he started for the vacant Cambridge University seat, having been put up by his friends on the spot and sent for from Scarborough; Lord Liverpool’s pro-Catholic nephew Lord Hervey* was already in the field. The young Tom Macaulay*, an undergraduate, considered Grant ‘a man qualified to represent the literature of the country, to do honour to its established system of education and to exhibit in his public conduct, the elegance ... manliness and ... liberality which our academical institutions are intended to produce’; but a more experienced Whig, John Whishaw, considered him ‘a respectable man, but very much a Saint and entirely devoted to ministerial politics’. Yet the Whig Sir James Mackintosh* was keen on him as ‘one of the most moderate (I may even say liberal) of Tories’ and a likely supporter of ‘the Irish politics of his brother’, whose pro-Catholic and conciliatory line had contributed to his humiliating removal from the Irish secretaryship a year earlier. Macaulay Letters, i. 181; Cambridge Chron. 2 Nov.; Add. 51653, Mackintosh to Holland, 27 Oct.; 51659, Whishaw to Lady Holland, 25, 29 Oct. 1822; Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV, i. 392. On 2 Nov. Grant explained to his friend Lord Calthorpe that although he was ‘almost certain’ to come in for Inverness Burghs at the next general election, he could expect to retain that seat for no more than two consecutive Parliaments, and was eager to get back into the House as soon as possible:

Since I enter into Parliament as a business, as part of my system of life, I must look forward ... and, acting on the supposition ... that life is spared to me until the average period, must provide if possible that I may not be again left in the lurch ... and may not either suffer the inconvenience (which, suffered a second time, would be irreparable) of completely cutting up my course of life, or purchase an exemption from it at an expense which neither I nor any member of my family could ever have well endured, but which we are now less able to endure than ever ... The next general election ... is not likely to take place at least for three [years] ... So long a delay ... must swallow up ... the best years of life. Even if I considered not myself but my family, I must think of [Charles], abandoned by every public connection and standing in the House of Commons without a single friend. To him, in his present situation, it must be important to have at least one supporter on whom he can rely.

In response to Calthorpe’s criticism that ‘some more explicit statement’ of his ‘political sentiments’ was required than was contained in his first circular (the work of his friends), he said that he had thought it best to let it be assumed that ‘I am of my brother’s politics’. If more was wanted, he was

perfectly willing to have it given out that my politics are those of an independent person, willing to support government, and from principle inclined to uphold establishments; yet ready, in a clear and strong case, to take his own line resolutely, and at all events not to vote against his conscience ... I would vote with government where I could ... Where I could not, I would rather stay away than vote against them; but ... in a third class of cases, I would even vote against them rather than stay away ... I should not choose to pledge myself in any way. Even did I pledge myself, that pledge must be partly contingent, depending on what may be the future conduct of government, which surely (and especially after the recent change [Canning’s return to office]) cannot be considered as altogether a given quantity. Hants RO, Calthorpe mss 26M62/F/C 545.

The intervention of the Whig James Scarlett* and the anti-Catholic William Bankes* dished Grant, who ungraciously withdrew four days before the election. Macaulay, like Charles John Shore, felt that he had damaged himself by his equivocation on the Catholic question:

He not only shrank from explanation ... but in his circular letter of resignation he absolutely complained of being considered as a supporter of the claims and represented the unfairness of attacking, on that ground, a person who had never spoken on the subject, and who had merely given one silent vote on it. Colchester Diary, iii. 262; Cambridge Chron. 22 Nov. 1822; Teignmouth, i. 302-3; Macaulay Letters, i. 223.

A threat to his position in Inverness Burghs in 1824 petered out, and by early 1825 the seat seemed ‘as secure as anything human can be’. NAS GD23/6/746/66, 75, 78; Add. 39193, f. 68. That year he composed A View of the System and Merits of the East India College at Haileybury, a defence of its monopoly on the training of Company writers based on his speech before the court of proprietors, 27 Feb. 1824. It was published in 1826, when he was duly returned unopposed for Inverness Burghs at the general election in July. Inverness Courier, 7, 21 June, 5 July 1826; NAS GD23/6/610.

Grant, whose brother had been vice-president of the board of trade since April 1823, was named to the select committee on the Arigna Mining Company, 5 Dec. 1826, and wrote and presented its report, 3 Apr. 1827. Add. 36463, f. 303; The Times, 4 Apr. 1827. He opposed inquiry into the Devon and Cornwall Mining Company, 15 May. He was appointed to the select committee on electoral malpractice by Northampton corporation, 21 Feb. He voted silently for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. His brother remained in office under Canning, and Grant divided with government against the disfranchisement of Penryn, 28 May, and Lord Althorp’s election expenses bill, 28 May, and for the grant for Canadian water defences, 12 June, when he spoke in the debate. The Times, 13 June 1827. He opposed proceeding that session with the salmon fisheries bill, 11 June, and ‘as a friend to toleration’ supported William Smith’s Dissenters’ marriages bill, 19 June 1827. Ibid. 12 June 1827.

Charles Grant joined the duke of Wellington’s ministry as president of the board of trade with his associates Huskisson and Lord Palmerston* in January 1828, and Robert was put up to second the address on the 29th, when John Croker* thought he did ‘very well’, but was ‘nothing remarkable’. Croker Pprs. i. 406. He was considered for the finance committee, but was not appointed to it. Add. 40395, f. 221; Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss SC17/26. He was named to the committees on Irish education and the Scottish entails bill, 11 Mar. He presented an individual’s petition against the salmon fisheries bill, 17 Mar., when he gave guarded support to the government’s tithes commutation bill. During the cabinet crisis of March, when his brother’s intransigence over the proposed modification of the corn laws threatened to end in his and Huskisson’s resignations, the latter appealed to Grant to try to persuade Charles to ‘yield something’. Add. 38755, f. 203. He paired with the minority for Fyler’s bill to lift the ban on the distribution of ribbons at elections, 20 Mar. He presented an Inverness-shire petition for continuance of the fisheries bounties, 18 Apr. He was named as a coadjutor in the preparation of the lord advocate’s bill to improve the Scottish prison system, though he had some reservations about the plan, favouring compulsion or at least an initial government grant to expedite the erection of new gaols. He was named to the committee on the measure, 15 May, and promoted and presented on 5 June a petition for effective reform from Inverness council. NAS GD23/6/573/5. He divided for Catholic relief, 12 May. When his brother resigned with the other Huskissonites at the end of the month, Grant was duly listed as one of the ‘rump of the Canning party’. He advocated the removal of restrictions on Europeans’ commercial intercourse with the Indian interior, 16 June, but next day opposed inquiry into the European inhabitants of Calcutta’s call for repeal of the local stamp duties. He voted against the bill to extend the franchise at East Retford to the freeholders of Bassetlaw, 27 June. He divided with government on the ordnance estimates, 4 July, but spoke and voted against their proposed ad valorem duty on silks, 14 July 1828, as he had ‘long viewed with indignation the manner in which the legislature trifles with the feelings and interests of the inhabitants of India’.

On 10 Feb. 1829 he argued that Peel, the home secretary, had failed to justify the introduction of a bill to outlaw the Catholic Association, but said he would accept it in order to secure ‘the great blessings’ of Catholic emancipation; the Whig George Agar Ellis* thought his speech was ‘admirable’. Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 10 Feb. [1829]. He did even better with his speech of 18 Mar. in favour of emancipation and invoking Canning’s memory, which, as his brother reported to their chief supporter in Inverness, James Grant of Bught, ‘covered him with glory’. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 18 Mar. 1829; Greville Mems. i. 274; Ellenborough Diary, i. 399; NAS GD23/6/746/121/1. He voted to allow Daniel O’Connell to take his eat unhampered, 18 May. He was named to the select committees on Scottish entails, 27 Feb., vestries, 28 Apr., and the registrar of Madras scandal, 5 May. He advocated wholesale reform of the system of trial and imprisonment for debt, 19 Feb., and supported Spring Rice’s bill to clarify the law touching the right of executors to claim the undisposed parts of a heritor’s personal estate, 10 Mar. He approved of Brownlow’s measure to promote the drainage of Irish bogs, 26 Feb., and the ministerial bill to assimilate Irish and English regulations on tobacco cultivation, 12 Mar., when he said that prohibition should be ended. He privately considered the new Scottish gaols bill to be no improvement on its predecessor and believed that ‘until some more mature and better concocted measure can be brought forward the legislature had better be quiet’. NAS GD23/6/573/6, 7. He presented hostile petitions from the councils of Inverness and Nairn, 12 May, Banff, 13 May, and Forres, 27 May, when, as a member of the committee on the bill, he told the House that he had tried to render it more efficient to its purpose. He was not sorry when it was abandoned for the session. Reporting this to Bught, he claimed not to have disregarded his wish to be furnished with full details of parliamentary proceedings relevant to his constituency, but he jibbed at the suggestion that he should send the complete daily votes of the House to Inverness. Ibid. 6/573/8. He voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May, and called for an independent commission to investigate British citizens’ claims on the French government, 28 May 1829. In July he married Maggie Davidson of Cantray, whom Macaulay considered to be ‘a fool’. Macaulay Letters, ii. 204.

Grant joined his brother in voting for Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb. 1830. He was named to the select committees on the East India Company, 9 Feb., and vestries, 10 Feb., and added to that on manufacturing employment, 3 June. After discussing the matter with Charles and John Denison*, he voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb. (and again, 5 Mar.), the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and investigation of the allegations of the duke of Newcastle’s interference at Newark, 1 Mar., but divided against Lord Blandford’s reform scheme, 18 Feb. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ossington mss OsC 74. As a spectator in the Lords, 13 Feb., he pronounced Wellington’s speech on Greece to be the work of ‘a great man’. Greville Mems. i. 373. He supported, in what Lord Ellenborough, president of the India board, considered ‘a moderate tone, but disingenuous’ speech, a motion for information on the dispute between the government of Bombay and the supreme court, 4 Mar.; he voted in the minority of 15 on the 15th. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 205. He divided with the revived opposition on all major issues in March. He supported the printing of the evidence in Ellenborough’s divorce case for the sake of ‘the moral welfare of the country’, 1 Apr., and opposed the enabling bill on the ground of ‘a moral incapacity’ to accept it, 6 Apr.; he was in the minority of 45 for reform of the divorce laws, 3 June. He had presented and endorsed the petition of 597 London Jews for removal of their disabilities, 22 Feb., and on 5 Apr. he moved for leave to introduce a bill to effect this, speaking ‘admirably for an hour and a half’, as Agar Ellis saw it. Ministers opposed him, but Peel’s absence and some bungling by the whips enabled him to carry the division by 115-97, to Wellington’s great fury. Agar Ellis diary, 5 Apr. 1830; Add. 40400, f. 154; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 349. On 17 May, when Grant expressed willingness to support Quaker emancipation, the second reading was opposed by Peel and defeated by 228-165. He voted for his brother’s motion on the Terceira incident, 28 Apr., and for repeal of the Irish coal duties, 13 May, and a return of privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May. He paired for abolition of the death penalty for forgery offences, 24 May and 7 June, and inquiry into the civil government of Canada, 25 May. On 30 Apr. he brought in a bill to reform bankruptcy administration, which had a second reading on 11 May but made no further progress. He presented petitions against the Scottish inventory duty and for a tax on West Indian rum equivalent to that on Scottish spirits, 26 May. On 24 June he argued that the government’s chancery regulation bill was ‘immature and ill digested’; he was twice a minority teller against it that day. On 2 July he gave notice of a motion to the effect that Parliament should not be dissolved before a possible regency had been provided for, should William IV die before Princess Victoria came of age. He moved an address to the king before ‘a very thin’ and ‘noisy and inattentive’ House, 6 July 1830, but was humiliatingly beaten by 247-93. Howick jnl. 11 July 1830; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 370.

The government made a dead set at the Grants at the ensuing general election, but failed to keep them out of the new Parliament. In normal circumstances Robert could have expected to come in again for the Burghs, where Inverness had the return, but he had caused ‘offence’ there and discovered that Bught and his colleagues on the council had transferred their support to a ministerialist. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 305; NAS GD23/6/573/9, 10; 6/583/22, 23; Inverness Courier, 28 July 1830. He gave up, returned to England and, after considering the possibilities there with Huskisson, went, on the advice of the Whig Henry Brougham*, to contest the open borough of Norwich with the local Quaker Richard Gurney. He declared his support for a ‘liberal, tolerant and enlightened’ domestic policy and an ‘energetic and honourable’ foreign one, and for retrenchment, reduced taxation and ‘every measure for the correction of public abuses and for obtaining a practical reform in the representation of the people’. To the delight of the Whigs, he and Gurney won a signal victory over two ministerialists, one of whom was a brother of Peel. St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss 195, T. to J. Gladstone, 20 28 July; Inverness Courier, 4 Aug.; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 333; Brougham mss, Mackintosh to Brougham, 31 July; Chatsworth mss, Brougham to Devonshire [21 Sept. 1830]; Add. 61937, f. 116. Ministers of course listed him as one of ‘the Huskisson party’. As such, he was included in autumn speculation as to whether they would join Wellington or the Whigs. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 391; Castle Howard mss, Abercromby to Carlisle, 26 Sept.; Brougham mss, Agar Ellis to Brougham, 4 Oct. 1830.">[footnote] On 11 Nov. 1830 he presented Norwich Dissenters’ petitions for the abolition of slavery. He divided in the majority against government on the civil list, 15 Nov. He was initially assigned to the post of judge advocate, worth £2,500 a year and with membership of the privy council, in the Grey ministry, where his brother was president of the board of control, but there arose a possibility that he would be offered the secretaryship at war in order to accommodate Mackintosh as judge advocate. When Charles gave him the ‘option’, however, he preferred the latter post. He received his patent on 4 Dec. 1830 and resigned his commissionership of bankruptcy. He also took a place at his brother’s board. Grey mss, Lansdowne to Grey [19 Nov.], C. Grant to same, 19 Nov.; Add. 51562, Brougham to Holland [22 Nov]; Lincs. AO, Tennyson d’Eyncourt mss 2 TdE H89/60; Brougham mss, R. Grant to Brougham, 4, 6 Dec. 1830. By then he had been safely re-elected for Norwich, where a threatened challenge evaporated, having borrowed £1,200 from Edward Littleton* for the purpose. (He had turned down the offer of a subscription from some grateful Jews in the summer.) Hatherton mss, Grant to Littleton, 24 Nov., Littleton to R. Wellesley, 26 Nov. 1830; Add. 51836, Goldsmid to Holland, 28 June [1831]. He presented more anti-slavery petitions, 10, 18 Dec. 1830, 29 Mar. 1831, and one for emancipation from metropolitan Jews, 15 Dec. 1830, when he gave notice for 17 Feb. 1831 of a motion, which was subsequently deferred. He asked for ministers to be given a fair trial of the sincerity of their promise to reduce pensions and salaries, 13 Dec. 1830. He was appointed to the renewed East India select committee, 4 Feb. 1831 (and again, 27 Jan. 1832). He presented a Norwich petition for repeal of the coastal coal duties, 14 Feb. 1831. Ellenborough reckoned that he spoke ‘miserably’ on the 18th, when he appealed to Irish Catholic Members to be ‘less warm’ in their agitation for repeal of the Union and again asked the House to give ministers time. Ellenborough Diary, 54. There was a false report in early March that he had resigned in protest at the scope of the ministerial reform scheme; Ibid. ii. 64. but on the 7th he spoke at length for it, admitting that his ‘early opinions were very much against’ reform, attributing his conversion to the recent French revolution and the success of reformers in open constituencies in 1830 and arguing that to ‘grant what is just and reasonable’ was the best way of ‘deflating extravagant hopes and expectations’. The Whigs William Ord* and Lord Durham respectively described his speech as ‘capital’ and ‘very clever in some parts’, while even the Tory Thomas Gladstone* conceded that he did ‘very well’. Add. 51569, Ord to Lady Holland [7 Mar.]; Grey mss, Durham to Grey [7 Mar.]; Glynne-Gladstone mss 197, T. to J. Gladstone, 8 Mar. 1831, Grant presented and endorsed reform petitions from Norwich and Peebles, 19 Mar., voted for the second reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar., tried to portray the hostile Cambridge University petition as one in favour of ‘moderate reform’, 30 Mar., and divided against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. At the ensuing general election he and Gurney won a crushing victory over two prominent anti-reformers. Three Diaries, 90.

Grant dismissed opposition complaints at the omission of any reference to Divine Providence in the speech from the throne, 22 June 1831. He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July (when Lord Grey complained at a dinner party that ‘the two Grants’ had ‘never been worth a farthing’ in their contribution to the ministry), Creevey Pprs. ii. 234. and divided steadily for its details. He opposed hearing counsel on the case of Appleby, 12 July, and on the 20th, defending his hustings criticism of aristocratic influence over the return of Members, said he wanted the representatives of the people to form ‘a House of Commons and not an out-house of the peers’. He conceded that in some large constituencies a poll would take longer than two days, 5 Sept. He presented petitions for the Norwich poor bill, 13 July, and was in the two ministerial majorities on the Dublin election controversy, 23 Aug. He voted for the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., after stating that it would ‘produce a vast and much required infusion of the popular mind and feeling into this House’ and oblige Members to be more responsive to their constituents’ opinions and interests. He voted for the second reading of the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept., repudiated a Tory allegation that ‘parchment votes’ had secured his brother’s return for Inverness-shire, 3 Oct., presented a Hamilton householders’ petition for that burgh’s enfranchisement, 6 Oct., and of course voted for the motion of confidence in the government, 10 Oct. He approved the principle of Brougham’s bill to reform chancery administration, 13 Oct., and supported its details, 14, 17 Oct. 1831, when he said that in his 15 years as a commissioner he had earned an average of £394. At the end of the month Lord Holland urged Brougham to press on Grey Grant’s replacement by Mackintosh, who would be just as ‘active and useful in the Commons ... as Robert Grant, who only makes two or three good speeches in a session’. Grey had evidently considered offering him the chief justiceship of Bengal, but nothing came of this, as Brougham was sure he would not take it. Brougham mss, Holland to Brougham, 27 Oct.; Add. 51563, reply [1 Nov. 1831].

Grant sat in the gallery for the introduction of the revised reform bill, 12 Dec. 1831. Croker Pprs. ii. 141. He voted for the second reading on the 17th, supported its details and spoke and voted for the third reading, 22 Mar. 1832. He was naturally in the government majorities on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 16 (when he spoke) and 20 July, and relations with Portugal, 9 Feb. Macaulay had some private fun at his expense by amusing his sisters with ‘all sorts of parodies on Watt’s Hymns about the sluggard, of which Mr. R. Grant, with his laziness, his fat, and his padding, was the hero’. According to Margaret Macaulay, who noted in mid-February rumours that ministers were still unsuccessfully trying to tempt Grant to go to India in order to bring her brother into office

two or three nights since, Tom, in endeavouring to get up to some high benches in the House, stumbled over Mr. R. Grant’s legs, as he was stretched out half asleep as usual. Being roused, he made many apologies in the usual manner, and then added, oddly enough, ‘I am very sorry, indeed, to stand in the way of your mounting’. Macaulay, ii. 230, 233-4.

Grant defended courts martial as ‘efficient and impartial’, 2 Apr., and opposed Hunt’s motion for the suspension of army flogging, 19 June, when he said that the authorities were working towards its abolition. On 3 Apr. he got leave to introduce a bill to fix the Norfolk assizes at Norwich, which passed its second reading by 44-13, 23 May, and received royal assent on 23 June (2 and 3 Gul. IV, c. 47). Brougham mss, Grant to Brougham, 26 Feb. 1831. He of course divided for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry reform unimpaired, 10 May, but he was credited with a vote for the Liverpool disfranchisement bill, 23 May, and only paired for the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May. He voted against increasing the Scottish county representation, 1 June, and defended the proposed £10 franchise there, 4 June. He deputized for his sick brother on an Indian question, 14 June. On 21 July 1832 he presented and endorsed another emancipation petition from London Jews and promised to pursue the issue.

At the general election of 1832 Grant, whom Macaulay had come to regard as ‘a regular twaddle’, topped the poll for the new metropolitan constituency of Finsbury. Macaulay Letters, ii. 266; The Times, 22 June, 7 Nov., 12, 13, 21 Dec. 1832. His Jewish emancipation bills of 1833 and 1834 foundered in the Lords. In June 1834 he accepted the governorship of Bombay and a knighthood. He died intestate at Dalpoorie, 9 July, after contracting a fever, and was buried at Poonah. Oxford DNB; Gent. Mag. (1838), ii. 658-9. Administration of his estate, which was sworn under £7,000, 17 June 1839, was granted to his widow, but his affairs were found to be in an ‘embarrassed state’. PROB 6/215/32; Holland House Diaries, 389. His brother published an edition of his hymns as Sacred Poems in 1839.