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James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam

British peer and Member of Parliament

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ6135004 ↗
Source-derived summary

James Walter Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam (26 September 1775 – 17 November 1845), styled Lord Dunboyne from 1775 until 1808 and known as the 4th Viscount Grimston from 1808 to 1815, was a British peer and politician.

Life and career

He was the son of James Grimston, 3rd Viscount Grimston of Gorhambury House and Harriot Walter.

In 1802 he was elected to the House of Commons for St Albans, a seat he held until 1808, when he succeeded his father as fourth Viscount Grimston and second Baron Verulam and entered the House of Lords. The latter year, he also succeeded his maternal cousin as tenth Lord Forrester.

In 1815 he was created Viscount Grimston and Earl of Verulam in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. He later held the honorary post of Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire from 1823 to 1845.

Marriage and issue

In 1807, he married Lady Charlotte Jenkinson, daughter of Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool and Catherine Bishopp. They had six sons and four daughters, and all of their daughters married earls:

James Walter Grimston, 2nd Earl of Verulam (Feb. 22, 1809 –1895)

Lady Katherine Grimston (April 18, 1810 – 1874), married in 1834 John Foster-Barham (d. 1838), married in 1839 George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon

Edward Harbottle Grimston (Aug.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam” is british peer and Member of Parliament. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Grimston and Earl, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1775, 1845, 1808, 1815—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1775-09-26. For this dossier, James, Grimston and Earl is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british peer and Member of Parliament” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6135004. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1775, 1845, 1808 and 1815.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
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  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam primary sources, James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.