William Henry Gregory

The Right Honourable Sir William Henry Gregory PC (Ire) KCMG
"An art critic" Gregory as caricatured by James Tissot in Vanity Fair, December 1871
14th Governor of British Ceylon
In office 4 March 1872 – 4 September 1877
Monarch	Queen Victoria
Preceded by	Henry Turner Irving acting governor
Succeeded by	James Robert Longden
Personal details
Born	1 July 1816 Dublin Castle
Died	6 March 1892 (aged 75) London, England
Nationality	British
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Temple Bowdoin (m.1872 until her death) Augusta, Lady Gregory (m.1880)
Children	William Robert Gregory (born 1881)
Alma mater	Harrow School Christ Church, Oxford
Occupation	Writer, Politician

Sir William Henry Gregory PC (Ire) KCMG (13 July 1816^[1] – 6 March 1892) was an Anglo-Irish writer and politician, who is now less remembered than his wife Augusta, Lady Gregory, the playwright, co-founder and Director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, literary hostess and folklorist.

Earlier life and education

The only child of Robert Gregory and Elizabeth O'Hara Gregory, William Gregory was born at the Under-Secretary's residence, Ashtown Lodge, in Phoenix Park, Dublin. From 1830 to 1835 he attended Harrow, where he was an award-winning student. He entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1836, but left three years later without receiving a degree.

Political career

In 1842 Gregory was elected to the British House of Commons in a by-election as a Conservative member for Dublin. Among his close associates were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Lincoln and Lord George Bentinck, but he was also friendly with Daniel O'Connell and sympathetic to Catholic interests. He was responsible for the "Gregory Clause" of the relief laws passed in response to the Irish Famine.

After Gregory failed to retain his seat in the general election of 1847 he took up residence on the family estate at Coole Park in County Galway. He was appointed High Sheriff of County Galway in 1849.^[2] He had inherited a large fortune, mainly derived from the earnings of his grandfather in the East India Company, but he lost a large part of it at the racetrack.^[3]

Gregory travelled to Egypt in 1855 and wrote a two-volume work on his travels, Egypt in 1855 and 1856, and Tunis in 1857 and 1858, published privately in London in 1859.

In 1857 he was returned to Parliament for County Galway on a liberal-conservative platform.

In 1859 he travelled through North America, befriending several southern Congressmen, including James Murray Mason of Virginia and William Porcher Miles of South Carolina. Throughout the American Civil War Gregory was an avid supporter of the Confederacy. He also argued that Britain should pursue a strong anti-Turkish policy, and supported the cession of the Ionian Islands and Crete to Greece. In domestic affairs Gregory was active in defending the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and working for land reform. His interest in the arts led to a long association with the British Museum.

On 10 July 1871 Gregory was made a member of the Privy Council of Ireland and in the following year he was appointed Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In 1875 he played host to the Prince of Wales and was presented with the Order of St. Michael and St. George.

Gregory retired from office in 1877 and returned to England via Australia. He spent most of the following years travelling. From October 1881 to April 1882 he toured Egypt and reported on the revolution there.He also visited Ceylon in 1884 and 1885.

Gregory was a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)^[4] and a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin.^[5]

Gregory Clause

During the Famine, the process of eviction in Ireland did not seem to have been advancing rapidly enough to satisfy Government, as a few years later another provision was devised calculated to facilitate it further. This was the Gregory Clause, introduced by Sir William Gregory of Coole Park, Gort, Member of Parliament for the city of Dublin. Gregory proposed to the House that any tenant rated at a net value not exceeding £5 should be assisted to emigrate by his local Guardians of the Union, the landlord to forego any claim for rent and to provide such fair and reasonable sum as might be necessary for the emigration of such occupier, the guardians being empowered to pay for the emigration of his family any sum not exceeding half what the landlord should give, the sum to be levied off local rates.

In Parliament, it was almost unanimously passed; of the 125 members present in the House only 9 voted against the measure.

The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr McHale, never forgave Gregory, and always referred to him as "Quarter Acre Gregory", a name by which he is still vaguely remembered in Ireland. In The History of the Great Famine of 1847, John O'Rourke wrote, "A more complete engine for the slaughter and degradation of a people was never designed. The previous clause offered facilities for emigrating to those who would give up their land; the quarter-acre clause compelled them to give it up or die of hunger." John Mitchel described the clause as "the cheapest and most efficient of the ejectment acts".^[6]

Personal life

Gregory was addicted to horse racing, which led to financial difficulties throughout his life. He remained fond of classical languages and literature, and always took an interest in artistic affairs.

Gregory married twice. On 11 January 1872 he married Elizabeth Temple Bowdoin, widow of James Temple Bowdoin and daughter of Sir William Clay. She died on 28 June 1873. On 4 March 1880 Gregory married Augusta Persse, later to become famous as Augusta, Lady Gregory. Their only child, William Robert Gregory, was born on 20 May 1881.

Death

Gregory died of respiratory failure in London on 6 March 1892. His autobiography was edited and published by Lady Gregory in 1894. He bequeathed the important painting Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Diego Velázquez, along with three other works including a Jan Steen, to the National Gallery, London of which he had been a Trustee from 1867 onwards.^[4][7]

Lake Gregory in Nuwara Eliya and Gregory's Road in Colombo are named for him.

Popular culture

He lends his name to the inspector in Arthur Conan Doyle's Silver Blaze, 1892. The Sherlock Holmes story is centered on the disappearance of a race horse on the eve of a major race.

He is sometimes considered to have been the model for Anthony Trollope's character Phineas Finn in the Palliser Novels.^[8] Trollope went to school with Gregory.

Notes

1. Brian Jenkins, Sir William Gregory of Coole. The Biography of an Anglo-Irishman, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1986, p. 22.
2. Walford, Edward (1919). The County Families of the United Kingdom. London: Robert Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.
3. Sir William Gregory, Joseph M. Hone, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 44, No. 175 (Autumn, 1955), pp. 337–341, Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, JSTOR
4. Cooke, Colman M. (1980) [1979], "Lady Gregory's Journals, Volume One, Books One to Twenty Nine, 10 October 1916–24 February 1925 by Daniel J. Murphy (book review)", Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 37: 97–101
5. Thomas Hay Sweet Escott, Club Makers and Club Members (1913), pp. 329–333
6. http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/history-of-ireland/galway-society-in-the-pas/the-early-workhouses-in-g/gregory-clause/
7. National Gallery
8. http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/g/Gregory_WH/life.htm

References

• Brian Jenkins, Sir William Gregory of Coole. Gerrards Cross, 1986
• Lady Gregory, Seventy Years 1852–1922. Gerrards Cross, 1973.
• Dictionary of National Biography, pp. 355–57.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Henry Gregory