in 1908 and Knight Grand Cross) in 1925. In 1928, he was admitted as a Knight of the Order of the Garter. He sat in the House of Commons from 1880 to 1905, when he was raised to the peerage. He was President of the Thames Conservancy Board from 1904 to 1937. He served with the London Chamber of Commerce, the Royal Agricultural Society, was a steward of Henley Royal Regatta, served as a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant. In 1919, the Desborough Committee investigated the causes of the London Police Strike of August 1918. Its recommendations resulted in the enactment of the influential Police Act of 1919. He was President of the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps, a voluntary home-defence militia, from November 1914 until it was disbanded in 1920. From 1924 to 1929 he was Captain of the Queen's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard. From 1919 to 1929 he was chairman of the Pilgrims of Great Britain. He planned and oversaw the construction of the Desborough Cut, an artificial navigation channel on the River Thames, which was opened in 1935. He married Ethel "Ettie" Fane in 1887. (See below.) They had three sons and two daughters. Their eldest son, the poet Julian Grenfell, was killed in action in 1915. Their second son, Gerald William Grenfell, was killed about two months later. Their third son, Ivo George Grenfell, died in 1926 after a car accident. With no surviving male heirs the barony became extinct after Grenfell's death. Ethel 'Ettie' Grenfell, née Fane, Lady Desborough (1867–1952) was the daughter of the Hon. Julian Fane, a diplomat and poet, the fifth and youngest son of John Fane, 11th Earl of Westmorland, and Lady Adine Eliza Anne Cowper, daughter of George Cowper, 6th Earl Cowper. Lady Adine died in 1868, a few months after the birth of a son (who did not live to adulthood). Fane died in 1870, leaving Ettie an orphan. She was 20 years old when she married William Grenfell. They welcomed gatherings of The Souls and many others to Taplow Court. Lady Desborough was a well-known celebrity and hostess whose guest lists included Henry Irving, Vita Sackville-West, Edward VII when Prince of Wales, H. G. Wells, Patrick Shaw Stewart, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill. From 1911 on, Ettie served periodically as Lady of the Bedchamber to Mary of Teck, Queen