GREY, Ralph William (1819-1869), of 47 Belgrave Square, London, Mdx. and Chipchase Castle, Northumb.

As private secretary to Lord John Russell and later Lord Palmerston, Grey was a steadfastly loyal Liberal member. A descendant of the Greys of Horton Castle, a merchant family of Newcastle who had acquired the Backworth Estate in Earsdon, five miles west of Tynemouth, in the early seventeenth century, Grey’s father, also Ralph William, the elder brother of Sir Charles Edward Grey, MP for Tynemouth, 1837-41, had succeeded to the family estates in 1812. After a long-running dispute over the right to work coal in Backworth, a copyhold township of the duke of Northumberland, the duke had purchased the Grey estates in 1822 for the sum of £160,000. Following the death of his father that year, an application was made to the court of chancery on behalf of Grey for a settlement of landed estate, and as a result, on coming of age, he succeeded to Chipchase Castle, on the north Tyne, in 1840.1R. Welford, Men of mark ’ twixt Tyne and Tweed (1895), ii. 380-2. Grey sold Chipchase Castle in 1862 to Hugh Taylor, MP for Tynemouth, 1852-3, 1859-61. That same year, he became private secretary to Lord Sydenham, governor-general of Canada, a position he held until Sydenham’s death in September 1841.2Letters from Lord Sydenham, governor-general of Canada, 1839-1841, to Lord John Russell, ed. P. Knaplund (1931), 69, 137.

At the 1847 general election, Grey was brought forward in the Liberal interest for Tynemouth. He declared at the nomination that he would ‘see that protection be fairly given to the shipping interest generally’, but being a supporter of free trade he refused to rule out reform of the navigation laws. His call for a custom house for the people of North Shields ‘in order to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the more large and powerful town of Newcastle’ was a popular one, and he was returned unopposed.3Newcastle Courant, 30 July 1847. In his only known contribution to debate, Grey restated his antipathy towards Newcastle by attacking the Tyne navigation bill, which ‘would still leave the whole power of managing important funds in the hands of the corporation of Newcastle’, 11 Feb. 1850. His amendment to postpone the second reading of the bill, however, came to nothing. He attended steadily in his first parliament, dividing consistently with Russell, to whom he was appointed private secretary in 1850, and in January the following year succeeded viscount Ebrington as parliamentary secretary to the Poor Law Board. He left this position in March 1852 on being appointed Palmerston’s private secretary. His popularity amongst his constituents, however, had been damaged by his support for the repeal of the navigation laws, and at the 1852 general election he was defeated by his Conservative opponent, the shipowner Hugh Taylor. Although Grey petitioned against the return on the grounds of his opponent’s bribery, both men were subsequently found to be, by their agents, guilty of treating in the form of refreshment tickets.4The Times, 16 Apr. 1853.

Grey sought a return to parliament in March 1854, when he came forward for a vacancy at Liskeard. Facing two other Liberal candidates, the campaign was fractious and he was accused of being the dupe of the least progressive element of the government. His refusal to pledge support for the ballot caused further hostility, but he persevered and narrowly defeated his main opponent, John Trelawny.5The Royal Cornwall Gazette, 24 Mar. 1854; Morning Chronicle, 25 Mar. and 31 Mar. 1854. Resuming his steady attendance in the Commons, he voted in 112 out of 198 divisions in the 1856 session, and was re-appointed as parliamentary secretary to the Poor Law Board in May 1856.6J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 3. A supporter of religious liberties, he divided for church rate abolition, 21 June 1854, and for the Maynooth grant, 19 Feb. 1857. His votes against Disraeli’s critical motion on the prosecution of the war, 25 May 1855, and Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, underlined his unswerving loyalty to Palmerston.

Re-elected at Liskeard in 1857 after defeating Arthur Gordon, the son of Lord Aberdeen, Grey continued to back Palmerston, and voted for his conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, and against the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859. His devotion to the premier was attacked at the 1859 general election, with one newspaper stating that ‘Mr Grey is nobody when his master is out of office’ and ‘if he goes to the House again [he] will but do the bidding of Lord Palmerston, as he always has done’.7The Royal Cornwall Gazette, 11 Apr., 15 Apr. 1859. Nevertheless, after a bitter contest, he defeated his Conservative opponent. His return to parliament, however, was fleeting, as soon after he was appointed a commissioner of customs, whereupon he took the Stewardship to the manor of Northstead.

Despite Grey’s closeness to Russell and Palmerston, there is no evidence to suggest that he wielded any influence during his time as their private secretary, and he receives scant attention in biographies of the two Liberal leaders. In October 1869, while still a commissioner, he died, without issue, from an attack of internal haemorrhaging after an illness of only three days. A sympathetic obituary remembered him as ‘a man of very considerable powers, with singular quickness of perception, accuracy of judgement, and knowledge of character’.8The Times, 4 Oct. 1869. The Grey family papers are located in the Bodleian library, Oxford, and the British Library holds a limited selection of his correspondence.9Bodl. Oxf., MSS. Eng. C. 6796-818, d. 3377-84, e. 3303-22; BL Add. Mss. 46126, ff. 333-6; 43069, f. 164; 39119, f. 259.