Bathurst, Henry, Earl of (1762-1834), was a British politician and government official. As secretary of state for war and the colonies from 1812 to 1827, Bathurst played a leading role in shaping the foreign policy of the United Kingdom. A member of the Tory Party, he supported the gradual abolition of slavery but opposed electoral reforms.
Bathurst was born on May 22, 1762. He studied at Eton College and at Christ Church College, Oxford University. He was elected to Parliament to represent Cirencester in 1783. Later that year, Prime Minister William Pitt, the Younger, appointed him lord of the Admiralty, which ran the Royal Navy. Bathurst served until 1789. From 1789 to 1791, he was a lord of the treasury. From 1793 to 1802, Bathurst held the position of commissioner on the Board of Control, which oversaw British involvement in India. He served as a member of the Privy Council, a group that advises the British monarch, from 1793 to 1834.
When his father, the second Earl of Bathurst, died in 1794, Bathurst became the third Earl of Bathurst. He served as master of the Mint from 1804 to 1806 and as foreign secretary briefly in 1809. From 1807 to 1812, Bathurst was president of the Board of Trade and again master of the Mint.
In 1812, Bathurst became secretary of state for war and the colonies in the government of the Earl of Liverpool. Bathurst worked closely with the Duke of Wellington, a British military commander and statesman. Bathurst backed the Peninsular War (1808-1814), in which British troops helped forces of Spain and Portugal throw off French rule. Following Wellington’s defeat of the French Emperor Napoleon I at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Bathurst oversaw Napoleon’s imprisonment. Beginning in 1823, Bathurst pushed for the gradual abolition of slavery in the British colonies. When Liverpool’s government ended in 1827, Bathurst resigned his position.
Bathurst returned to serve in Wellington’s government from 1828 to 1830 as lord president of the Privy Council. Bathurst supported the Catholic Emancipation Act, which allowed Roman Catholics to hold seats in Parliament and most other government offices. But he opposed proposals to modernize the British electoral system. Bathurst died at his home in London on July 27, 1834.
