George Ward Hunt

George Ward Hunt (30 July 1825 – 29 July 1877) was a British statesman of the Conservative Party who was Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty in the first and second ministries of Benjamin Disraeli. Early life He was born at Buckhurst in Berkshire, the eldest son of the Rev. George Hunt of Winkfield, and his wife Emma Gardiner, daughter of Samuel Gardiner of Coombe Lodge, Oxfordshire. His father was rector of Barningham and then Boughton. He was educated at Eton College. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1844. As an undergraduate, he went on vacation reading parties with Arthur Hugh Clough: in 1845 at Grasmere, in 1846 at Castleton of Braemar and in 1847 at Drumnadrochit on Loch Ness. In Clough's poem The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich, he is identified with the outsize character Hobbes. Hobbes dances in a kilt, and Hunt painted a self-portrait of himself wearing one. Hunt graduated B.A. in 1848, and M.A. in 1851; on 21 November of that year he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple. Political career Hunt entered the House of Commons in 1857 as Member of Parliament for Northamptonshire North, at the end of the year, having made several unsuccessful attempts previously. He was a Secretary to the Treasury from 1866 to 1868, in the ministry of the 14th Earl of Derby. Regarded as "sensible but dull", according to Derby's biographer Hawkins, he was then appointed to the Exchequer when Disraeli took office.