George Ward Hunt

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Robert Lowe
Personal details
Born(1825-07-30)30 July 1825
Bad Homburg, Germany
NationalityBritish
Political partyConservative
SpouseAlice Eden (d. 1894)
Alma materChrist Church, Oxford
Vanity Fair
, March 1871

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 Park 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.[2][5]

Hunt graduated B.A. in 1848, and M.A. in 1851;

called to the bar at the Inner Temple.[1]

Political career

Hunt entered the

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.[6]

There is a Westminster tradition that, on leaving

Budget speech, by holding it aloft.[7] When Hunt presented his one and only Budget speech, he kept the House of Commons waiting, and it is supposed that he had left the speech behind.[1] When he spoke, the Budget presentation was the shortest recorded.[8]

Hunt was appointed to the

Admiralty for Disraeli's second ministry, serving from 1874 until his death from gout in 1877. Although he was considered competent at finance, his turn at the Admiralty was, for a long time, not much admired. That attitude has, however, been revised.[9] Canada's Ward Hunt Island was named for him. It is off Ellesmere Island, and of interest for the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf observed in 1876 by Pelham Aldrich.[10]

Hunt died at Bad Homburg, Germany, in July 1877, on the eve of his 52nd birthday. His wife died in 1894.

Family

Hunt married Alice, daughter of the Right Reverend Robert Eden, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, in 1857. They had five sons and five daughters,[1] including Sir Allen Thomas Hunt, an Admiral in the Royal Navy.

Hunt's residence was Wadenhoe House in Northamptonshire.

Notes

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14192. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ a b "Northamptonshire Past & Present 1976" (PDF). northamptonshirerecordsociety.org.uk. p. 349.
  3. ^ "Hunt, George (1810–1820) (CCEd Person ID 78237)". The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
  4. ^
    Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-8264-8269-3
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-19-920441-0
    .
  7. ^ "The Budget and Parliament". parliament.uk.
  8. ^ Wilding, Norman W.; Laundy, Philip (1968). An Encyclopaedia of Parliament. F. A. Praeger. p. 62.
  9. ^ Eric J. Grove, The Royal Navy since 1815, p. 57-59.
  10. ISBN 978-0-607-98290-9
    .

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to George Ward Hunt.
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Northamptonshire North
1857–1877
With: Lord Burghley 1857–1867
Sackville Stopford-Sackville
1867–1877 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Financial Secretary to the Treasury
1866–1868 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chancellor of the Exchequer
1868 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
First Lord of the Admiralty

1874–1877 		Succeeded by
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Ward_Hunt&oldid=1217935010"