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
William Vernon Harcourt (scientist) and charitable character. The Yorkshire School for the Blind, and the Castle Howard Reformatory, besides many other useful institutions, owed their existence to him. In 1861, on the death of his elder brother, George Granville Harcourt, he succeeded to the Harcourt estates at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire, and his latter years were spent at Nuneham House among his books and in the congenial society of men of culture and science. He died in April 1871, in his eighty-second year. He married, in 1824, Matilda Mary, daughter of Colonel William Gooch, by whom he was father to Edward William Harcourt of