William Harcourt (politician) 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 was
Augustus George Vernon Harcourt on the ground of their belonging to different religious denominations." This resulted in the founding of Somerville Hall (later Somerville College). In 1872, Harcourt married Rachel Mary Bruce, daughter of the Home Secretary, Henry Bruce. The couple had two sons and eight daughters. Harcourt remained at Oxford until he retired in 1902, whereupon he moved to St Clare, near Ryde on the Isle of Wight. He died there in 1919, and his wife followed in 1927. In a long partnership, Harcourt and William Esson studied the rates of chemical reactions. Among the processes they investigated was the acid-catalyzed iodine clock