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
Viscount Harcourt also created Baron Nuneham, of Nuneham Courtenay in the County of Oxford, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Harcourt was the son of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, son of William Vernon Harcourt, son of the Honourable and Right Reverend Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, son of George Venables-Vernon, 1st Baron Vernon, by his third wife, Martha Harcourt, daughter of Simon Harcourt, son of Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt. After the death of the first viscount in 1922, the second viscount succeeded his father while still a student at Eton College. He married twice but left no sons, and the title became extinct