GREY, Henry (1683-1740), of Horton, Northumb. and Billingbear, Berks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

21 Nov. 1709 - 1713
1 Dec. 1719 - 1722
11 Mar. 1723 - 1727
1734 - 9 Sept. 1740

Family and Education

b. 17 Aug. 1683, 2nd s. of Richard Neville, M.P., of Billingbear; yr. bro. of Grey Neville and uncle of Richard Neville Aldworth. m. Elizabeth, 1st da. of James Griffin, M.P., 2nd Baron Griffin of Braybrooke, sis. and coh. of Edward, 3rd Baron, s.p. suc. to the Northumbrian estates of his maternal uncle Ralph Grey, M.P., 4th Baron Grey of Warke, 1706, and to his e. bro.’s estates at Billingbear 1723.

Offices Held

Biography

Henry Neville took the name of Grey by private Act of Parliament in 1707 in accordance with his uncle’s will, under which he succeeded to estates charged with £40,000, the price of the 3rd Lord Grey’s pardon for his share in Monmouth’s rebellion. He was returned as a Whig at a contested by-election for Wallingford in 1719; stood unsuccessfully for Berkshire in 1722; and joined his elder brother, Grey Neville, as Member for Berwick in 1723. Early in 1726, when ‘the interest upon the £40,000 amounted to £12,000, ... the mortgagees foreclosed and entered on his estate’, although ‘he had coming in £9,700 per annum, in as good rents as in England’. On 18 Feb. Grey

charged his pistols in the morning, taking them with him ... he sent a letter to his wife and another to Sir Robert Walpole, dated from a tavern, I think in Drury Lane: he told his wife that she would see him no more and Sir Robert, that he desired he would dispose of his borough ... since then search has been made for him but to no purpose.

Ten days later Grey

has since been heard of from Calais and ... intends to return when he can reconcile himself to the looking his friends again in the face. Peter Walter proposes to put him in a method of paying his debt and to allow him £2,000 a year out of his estate to live upon, everything else of Grey’s to be sold to pay his debts.1

In November 1732 he was among several parliamentary candidates considered by the Berwick corporation ‘for a third man, to make some sport as they call it’.2 Successful in 1734 for Reading, he voted with the Government till his death, 9 Sept. 1740.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: R. S. Lea

Notes

See Rowland, Hist. Fam. of Neville, table v.

  • 1. HMC Portland, vii. 426; Dr. Geo. Clarke to Edw Nicholas, 19 Feb. and 1 Mar. 1726, Egerton mss 2540, ff. 588-9, 596-7.
  • 2. Geo. Liddell to Sir Robt. Walpole, 24 Nov. 1732, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.