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 Harcourt (politician) John Howland of Streatham. William was therefore born a Vernon, and by his connection with the old families of Vernon and Harcourt was related to many of the great English houses, a fact of which he was proud. In later life his descent from the Plantagenets was a joke among his political opponents. William's childhood was an austere one, educated at home by a Swiss governess, he was sent to a private school at Southwell, Nottinghamshire when he was eight. William's father denied him a public school education, sending him to be educated in classics at the small class of