Author: Cooper, Grey
Biography:
COOPER, Grey (1725-1801: ancestry.co.uk)
He was the eldest son of William Cooper (d 1758), a physician from Newcastle upon Tyne, and his wife Mary Grey of Alnwick, Northumberland. They had married in Alnwick on 29 Oct. 1723. Cooper was educated at Durham School before being admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on 3 May 1743 (BA 1746, MA 1750, Fellow 1749). He entered the Middle Temple on 16 July 1747 and was called to the bar in 1751. On 5 Oct. 1753 at Tynemouth he married Margaret Grey (b 1726) who may have been a relation. She died in 1755 and on 19 July 1762 at Clifton, Gloucestershire, he married Elizabeth Kennedy. They had two sons, William and Frederick, and two daughter, Elizabeth and Caroline. In 1775 he revived the dormant baronetcy of his great-great grandfather to become Sir Grey Cooper of Gogar. Cooper entered politics in 1765 and was successively MP for Rochester, Kent, (1765-68); Grampound, Cornwall, (1768-74); Saltash, Kent, (1774-84), and Richmond, Yorkshire, (1786-90). He served as secretary of the treasury from 1765 to 1782. His position was financially lucrative because Cooper had negotiated a handsome pension on the grounds that in taking up the post he had abandoned a successful legal career. His speeches in the House of Commons were usually about financial matters. Cooper managed to secure several sinecures for himself and he negotiated for his sons the reversion of the post of auditor of the land revenue; details are included in Cooper’s will. He left parliament in 1790 and was made a privy councillor in 1796. He died very suddenly at Worlington, Suffolk, on 30 July 1801 and there is a memorial to him in All Saints church at Worlington. His eldest son assumed the baronetcy despite its legitimacy being a matter of dispute even in his father’s lifetime. Cooper’s one book of verse, Stanzas, was privately printed and dedicated to his friend the Rev. William Mason (q.v.). (ODNB 9 Apr. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 9 Apr. 2024; ACAD; historyofparliamentonline.org 9 Apr. 2024; London Courier 1 Aug. 1801; Lorna J. Clark, ed. The Diary of Lucy Kennedy [sister-in-law] [2021]) SR