Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet

Trevelyan was born in Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, the only son of Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, and Hannah, daughter of Zachary Macaulay and sister of the historian Lord Macaulay. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society, and earned second place in the first class of the Classical Tripos in 1861. That same year he wrote his Horace at the University of Athens, a topical drama in verse, parts of which are said to have offended William Whewell and lost Trevelyan a fellowship. He was a Cambridge Apostle. ==Political career==

In 1862 Trevelyan went out as a civil servant to India, where he spent several years. At the general election of 1868 he was returned for the Hawick Burghs, which he continued to represent until 1886. When the first Gladstone ministry was formed in December 1868, Trevelyan was appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty, but resigned in July 1870 on a point of conscience connected with the government Education Bill. He advocated a sweeping reform of the army, including the abolition of the purchase of commissions, and both in and out of parliament he was the foremost supporter for many years of the extension of the county franchise. In the session of 1874 he brought forward his Household Franchise (Counties) Bill, which was lost on the second reading – it was not till ten years later that the agricultural labourer was enfranchised. Among other causes which he warmly supported were women's suffrage, a thorough reform of metropolitan local government, and the drastic reform or abolition of the House of Lords. He was also in favour of the direct veto and other temperance legislation. From November 1884 to June 1885 he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet. In February 1886 he became Secretary for Scotland and vice-president of the Scottish Education Department in Gladstone's third administration, but resigned in March over Irish Home Rule. The same year he succeeded his father in the baronetcy. From 1892 to 1895 he was again Secretary for Scotland and vice-president of the Scottish Education Department. He resigned his seat in parliament in early 1897 and retired into private life. In 1911 he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit. ==Writings==

During his stay in India, Trevelyan contributed "Letters of a Competition Wallah" to ''Macmillan's Magazine (republished 1864). Cawnpore, an account of the massacre there during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, was published in 1865. In 1867 he wrote The Ladies in Parliament, a humorous political brochure in verse. In 1876 he published The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (a second, enlarged edition appeared in 1908), and in 1880 he published The Early History of Charles James Fox. In 1899 he published the first volume of a History of the American Revolution, which was completed (three volumes) in 1905. In the latter year, as Interludes in Prose and Verse'', he republished his early classical "jeux d'esprit" and Indian pieces. He published two volumes of his work George III and Charles Fox in 1912 and 1914. ==Family==

Trevelyan married Caroline, daughter of Robert Needham Philips, ==Works==

published in Vanity Fair in 1873. • Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006) == External links ==