William Harcourt (politician) Attribution William Harcourt (politician) Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, KC (14 October 1827 – 1 October 1904) was a British lawyer, journalist and Liberal statesman. He served as Member of Parliament for various constituencies 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. Harcourt
Harcourt Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone, 1st Baron Derwent Harcourt Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone, 1st Baron Derwent Harcourt Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone, 1st Baron Derwent (3 January 1829 – 1 March 1916), known as Sir Harcourt Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone, 3rd Baronet, from 1869 to 1881, was a British peer and Liberal Party politician. He served for ten years as a Member of Parliament (MP), before becoming a peer with a seat in the House of Lords. Derwent was the son of Sir John Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone, 2nd Baronet, and Louisa Augusta Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, daughter of the Most Reverend Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, Archbishop of York. He succeeded as second Baronet on the death of his father in 1869 and the same year