Charles Edward Grey

Sir Charles Edward Grey, GCH, PC (1785 – 1 June 1865) was a British judge in India and colonial governor.

Grey was the second son of Ralph William Grey (1745/6–1812), a barrister, of Backworth House, Earsdon, Northumberland, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Brandling MP, of Gosforth House, Northumberland. His father, descended from a merchant family of Newcastle, was High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1792.

Grey matriculated at University College, Oxford in 1802 and graduated BA in 1806, the year he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn. In 1808, he won the Oxford English Prize Essay with his composition 'Hereditary rank' and was elected a Fellow of Oriel College. He was called to the bar in 1811, and in 1817 was appointed a commissioner in bankruptcy. In 1820 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Madras. He was made a Knight Bachelor on 17 May 1820 and in April 1821, before his departure, married Elizabeth (1800/01–1850), the second daughter of Revd. Sir Samuel Clarke Jervoise, Bt, of Idsworth Park, Hampshire. Grey's elder brother, Ralph William (1779/80–1822), had earlier married Elizabeth's sister, Anne.

The newly-weds arrived in Madras in September 1821, and in 1825, Grey was made Chief Justice of Calcutta. It was a controversial appointment as both of the puisne judges at Calcutta, Sir Francis Macnaghten and Sir Anthony Buller, were senior to Grey; Macnaghten ostentatiously resigned his judgeship shortly after Grey's arrival and Buller retired in 1827. Grey fared better, however, with their replacements, Sir John Franks and Sir Edward Ryan, and the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, made a point of commending him for his helpfulness, especially in drafting proposals for the framing of a legislative council for India. He was governed, Bentinck recorded, 'by the most impartial and liberal spirit, and by an anxious desire to give every support to the government'. Grey described himself as 'a bit by bit reformer', who, by virtue of his legal training, inclined to cautious gradualism, although, in his more fanciful moments, he envisaged transplanting both English law and a form of English aristocracy to India. He served for a time as President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (although he revealed no talents for oriental studies), and with his wife, an accomplished musician, shone at the heart of Calcutta's expatriate society. In 1829 they showered hospitality on the young French botanist Victor Jacquemont, who delighted in their company. Grey's 'subtle wit', he observed, belied his 'most austere' appearance, but it was the 'beautiful, gracious and amiable' Lady Grey who inspired Jacquemont's deepest affection.

The Greys left India in 1832. In 1835, Grey was made a Privy Councillor and was sent to Montreal as one of the three commissioners for investigating the causes of discontent in Lower Canada, his colleagues being Lord Gosford and Sir George Gipps. The commission was not a success — rebellions in both Upper and Lower Canada followed in 1837 — but it had the effect of confirming that Britain both expected and required her North American colonies to develop stable means of self-government. Grey left Canada in November 1836, and on his return to England was made a GCH. In 1837, he unsuccessfully contested Tynemouth and North Shields. He gained the seat in February 1838 when his opponent, Sir George Young, was unseated on petition, and from then until the summer of 1841 he steadily supported the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne.

Grey had let it be known, however, that parliamentary life was not to his liking, and in August 1841, he was appointed Governor of Barbados and the Windward Islands, covering Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Tobago, and Trinidad. With his forbidding air of reserve, he was not a crowd-pleaser, but he was a competent and impartial administrator, keen to find a way of incorporating the freed slaves into an ordered society and critical of the home government's apparent desire to wash its hands of the social and economic problems of its Caribbean colonies. As the free trade movement gathered strength in Britain, he tried to ready planters for worldwide competition by encouraging spending on road building, port improvements, and the mechanization of sugar production.

In 1846, Grey was promoted to the governorship of Jamaica, which was in a worse state than any of the Windwards had been. He arrived on 22 December to find the local house of assembly in an uproar over the successive blows that the plantation economy had suffered from the loss of slave labour and the ending of the colonial sugar preference. Uncomfortably associated in both name and politics with the abolitionist and free-trading Whig 'cousinhood' who were now in power in Britain (Henry Grey, 3rd Earl Grey, was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies), Grey had a rocky welcome, and struggled throughout his tenure to convince the planters that he had the best interests of the island at heart. Believing protection would never be restored, he attempted to promote the immigration of free labour from Africa, and repeatedly badgered the Colonial Office for assistance. The economic crisis of autumn 1847 in Britain worsened conditions, with many planters unable to get credit, and when the home government finally agreed to fund the importation of liberated Africans, Grey scrabbled to find even the small sums needed for their initial subsistence costs. In October 1850 a devastating cholera epidemic further shook the island. As Jamaicans died in their thousands, back in London, on 15 November, Grey's wife also succumbed to illness. In spite of the thanklessness of his task, however, Grey remained in office for over six years, and, under the circumstances, it was a testimony to his sense of duty and his tact that he suffered no greater unpopularity than he did. He finally left Jamaica in 1853, although he retained an estate in the Blue Mountains, which he was to leave to his eldest son, Jervoise.

Grey retired to England and settled first in Hyde Park, London, and subsequently in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He died at Tunbridge Wells on 1 June 1865. He was survived by four sons and four daughters.

Source

• This article incorporates text from the Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900), a publication now in the public domain.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Sir George Young (unseated)	Member of Parliament for Tynemouth and North Shields 1838–1841	Succeeded by Henry Mitcalfe
Government offices
Preceded by Charles Darling	Governor of Barbados and the Windward Islands 1841–1846	Succeeded by William Reid
Preceded by The Earl of Elgin	Governor of Jamaica 1846–1853	Succeeded by Sir Henry Barkly

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