Grenville, Thomas (1755 -1846)

Thomas Grenville was the third but second surviving son of the Honorable George Grenville, of Wotton Hall in Buckinghamshire, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wyndham Baronet. He entered Christ Church, Oxford as a Gentleman Commoner, matriculating 9 December 1771. On 18 May 1778 he was gazetted an ensign in the Coldstream Guards, and afterwards Lieutenant in what became the 80th of Foot, the Rutland Regiment. He resigned his commission, and was elected Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire in 1780. In 1782 he was entrusted with the negotiations for the Treaty of Peace with the United States of America, but was recalled on the death of Rockingham. At the election of 1784 he lost his seat, but was returned for Aldburgh in 1790, was Minister Extraordinary at Vienna in 1794, Member for Buckingham in 1796, Ambassador to Berlin in 1799, for a time First Lord of the Admiralty, but virtually retired from public life in 1807 and finally gave up his seat in Parliament in 1818. He had intended to leave his books to his nephew the Duke of Buckingham, but in a codicil to his will he revoked the bequest, stating that as his books had been in great part acquired from a sinecure office [the office of Chief Justice in Eyre South of the Trent, which he held from 1800 to 1817, when it was abolished], he felt it right to leave them to the British Museum. The Duke was left a number of manuscripts.