A scion of a copper manufacturing dynasty who was later a distinguished City banker, the Liberal Grenfell made succinct, informed contributions in a number of areas during his brief parliamentary career. His family’s fortunes had been founded by his grandfather Pascoe Grenfell (1761-1838), of St. Just, Cornwall, a leading copper merchant and partner in a copper smelting business known after 1829 as Pascoe Grenfell & Sons, who had been one of the early industrialists to serve in the late Hanoverian Commons, representing Great Marlow, 1802-20, and Penryn, 1820-26.1E. Newell, ‘Grenfell family (per. c. 1785-1879)’, www.oxforddnb.com; HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 406-9; I.R. Christie, British ‘non-élite’ MPs, 1715-1820 (1995), 114. Grenfell’s father Charles Pascoe Grenfell (1790-1867), was the second son of Pascoe Grenfell, who he succeeded as chief of the family firm, and was Liberal MP for Preston 1847-52, 1857-65.2Newell, ‘Grenfell family’.
Although Grenfell was a partner in the copper business, from the 1840s he pursued a career in the City in the family’s banking house.3A.C. Howe, ‘Grenfell, Henry Riversdale (1824-1902)’, www.oxforddnb.com. However, after falling out with his father and uncles in 1853, Grenfell left the bank (which he later re-joined) and began to move more in political circles, chiefly through his friendship with Chichester Fortescue, Liberal MP for county Louth, 1847-74, with whom he lived for ten years.4‘…and Mr. Fortescue’: a selection from the diaries from 1851 to 1862 of Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford, ed. O.W. Hewett (1958), 18-19; Howe, ‘Grenfell’. As a member of this circle of young Whigs gathered around the political salon of Frances, Lady Waldegrave, Grenfell was a natural choice to be a private secretary for Liberal ministers, firstly serving Fox Maule, Lord Panmure, during the Crimean War, and then Sir Charles Wood at the India Office.5Dod’s parliamentary companion (1863), 207; K.D. Reynolds, ‘Fortescue, Francis Elizabeth Ann Parkinson- (1821-1879)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Grenfell contested Chester at the 1857 general election as a Palmerstonian Liberal, offering support for the ballot and the extension of the suffrage, but was relegated into third place by two other Liberals with stronger local connections.6McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 57; The Times, 19 Mar. 1857; Daily News, 9 Mar. 1857; Cheshire Observer, 14, 28 Mar. 1857. Grenfell was equally unsuccessful as a candidate at the Lymington by-election, 24 May 1860.7Morn. Chro., 24 May 1860; Daily News, 24 May 1860; Hampshire Telegraph, 26 May 1860. McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 189, mistakenly gives the date of the by-election as 12 July 1860.
Grenfell’s government connections meant that when he was invited to contest the Stoke by-election in September 1862, a rival Liberal candidate denounced him as a ‘placeman’, ‘nominee’ and a ‘creature of a Reform Club coterie’.8Birmingham Daily Post, 8, 15, 22 Sept. 1862. However, Grenfell was returned and joined his father in Parliament; his older brother Charles William Grenfell, Liberal MP for Sandwich 1847-52 and Windsor 1852-59, had died in 1861. In his maiden speech, 27 Mar. 1863, Grenfell counselled against British involvement in the American Civil War or on behalf of Polish independence.9Hansard, 27 Mar. 1863, vol. 170, c. 100. The following year he reluctantly opposed the extension of the Factory Acts to the Staffordshire Potteries, arguing that applying existing mines legislation to the industrial region would be preferable.10Hansard, 14 June 1864, vol. 175, cc. 1721-3. Grenfell was re-elected in 1865, when he contended that ‘the financial platform of the Conservative party consisted of the repeal of the malt duty, and nothing more’, and also criticised his opponents for ‘always’ opposing the removal of ‘obnoxious disabilities’ on Dissenters and Catholics.11The Standard, 12 July 1865.
A Liberal loyalist, Grenfell supported the government’s redistribution of seats bill, 4 June 1866, although he admitted that it had been produced in a ‘hurry’. He challenged Robert Lowe’s defence of small boroughs as havens for young talented individuals, noting that few of these constituencies had recently returned MPs ‘who could be compared to Pitt, Fox, Burke or Canning’.12Hansard, 4 June 1866, vol. 183, c. 1830. During the debates on the representation of the people bill the following year, Grenfell voted to disenfranchise small boroughs, increase the representation of the largest towns and to extend the franchise, including to compound ratepayers. Grenfell blamed the collapse of a number of banks on the incompetence and imprudence of their managers rather than any failings of the Bank of England, of which he had become a director in 1865.13Hansard, 18 Mar. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 96-8. He was critical of Charles Trevelyan’s proposal to abolish the sale and purchase of army commissions. Unless MPs were prepared to support the expensive alternative of conscription, it would be unwise to adopt such a measure, Grenfell suggested, 19 May 1868.14Hansard, 19 May 1868, vol. 192, cc. 553-5.
Grenfell unsuccessfully stood as William Gladstone’s running mate in South West Lancashire at the 1868 general election, and further attempts to return to the Commons at Truro in 1874 and Barnstaple in 1880 met with defeat.15McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 15, 164, 297; Morning Post, 29 Jan. 1874. He was deputy governor of the Bank 1879-81, and governor 1881-3, and thereafter he was a prominent advocate of a bimetallic (gold and silver) standard as a remedy for the deflation of the late nineteenth century.16Howe, ‘Grenfell’; E.H.H. Green, ‘Rentiers versus producers?: the political economy of the bimetallic controversy, c. 1880-1898’, English Historical Review, 103 (1988), 588-612 (at 599, 611-12); A.C. Howe, ‘Bimetallism, c. 1880-1898: a controversy re-opened?’, ibid., 105 (1990), 377-91 (at 382). He was a Liberal Unionist after 1886. On his death in 1902, Grenfell was succeeded by his only son Edward Charles Grenfell (1870-1941), the London partner of the American financier J.P. Morgan and Conservative MP for the City of London 1922-35, after which he was ennobled as 1st baron St. Just.17Howe, ‘Grenfell’; K. Burk, ‘Grenfell, Edward Charles (1870-1941)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Grenfell’s nephew, William Henry Grenfell (1855-1945), was Liberal MP for Salisbury, 1880-82, 1885-86, Hereford, 1892-93, and Unionist MP for Wycombe 1900-5, before entering the Lords as 1st baron Desborough.18I.F.W. Beckett, ‘Grenfell, William Henry (1855-1945)’, www.oxforddnb.com.