William Vernon Harcourt

Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt (14 October 1827 – 1 October 1904) was a British lawyer, journalist and Liberal statesman. He served as Member of Parliament for Oxford, Derby then West Monmouthshire and held the offices of Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under William Ewart Gladstone before becoming Leader of the Opposition. A talented speaker in parliament, he was sometimes regarded as aloof and possessing only an intellectual involvement in his causes. He failed to engender much emotional response in the public and became only a reluctant and disillusioned leader of his party. Historian Roy Jenkins says he was "too much of a party man. In manner and by origin he was a patrician figure, but he saw most issues exclusively in terms of parliamentary infighting… His views were usually much more of a reaction to what his political enemies, in the other party and in his own, were saying than the result of any objective thought. He inspired considerable loyalty among his followers – the Great Gladiator he was sometimes enthusiastically called – but his colleagues, partly as a result of his execrable temperament and his bullying… found him a difficult man with whom to work." Family and ancestry Harcourt was the second son of Canon William Vernon Harcourt, a scientist and owner of Nuneham Park, Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire and his wife Matilda Mary, daughter of Colonel William Gooch. His father was the fourth son and eventually heir of Edward Harcourt, Archbishop of York and his wife Lady Anne Leveson-Gower. Anne was a daughter of Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford and kinswoman Lady Louisa Egerton. Her maternal grandparents included Scroop Egerton, 1st Duke of Bridgewater and Rachel. Rachel was a daughter of Wriothesley Russell, 2nd Duke of Bedford and the rich heiress Elizabeth, daughter of John Howland of Streatham. William was, due to the family's appendage of a surname to recognise an inheritance, born a Vernon, and his position as a senior heir in the landed Vernon and Harcourt was emphasised by his link to many of the greater English houses, a fact of which he was proud. In later life his descent from the Plantagenets was a joke among his political opponents.