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
Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt of the see of Carlisle with good sense and discretion, spending more than the whole income of the see upon the wants of his diocese. After the death of Archbishop William Markham. Venables-Vernon was nominated on 26 November 1807 as archbishop of York, and was confirmed in St. James's Church, Westminster on 19 January 1808. In the same year, on 20 January, he was gazetted a privy councillor, and made Lord High Almoner to George III, an office which he also held under Queen Victoria's reign. According to the account of Dean Alford: "Archbishop Harcourt was very fond of hunting,