Amabel Hume-Campbell, 1st Countess de Grey

Amabel Hume-Campbell, 1st Countess de Grey and 5th Baroness Lucas (22 January 1751 – 4 March 1833) was a political writer.

Born Amabel Yorke, she was the eldest of the two daughters of The Honourable Philip Yorke and his wife, Jemima Yorke, 2nd Marchioness Grey. When her father inherited the earldom of Hardwicke in 1764, she was entitled to the nominal prefix, "Lady".

Amabel grew up in the political and intellectual atmosphere of her parents' homes at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, and St. James's Square, Westminster. She was educated at home, and became an avid reader; her mother's friend, the scholar Catherine Talbot, said of her that, aged five, she "has no joy but in books, and of those will not read little idle stories such as were first given to her, but picks out for herself. Her knowledge in geography and English history is astonishing". Walpole later wrote that her sister, Mary, "behaved like a human creature, and not like her sister or a college-tutor".

On 16 July 1772, at St. James's, Amabel married Alexander Hume-Campbell, Viscount Polwarth (1750–1781), the eldest surviving son of Hugh Hume-Campbell, 3rd Earl of Marchmont, and his second wife, Elizabeth; it appears to have been a love match. Polwarth was interested in books but was a keen hunter too and also established a model farm on the Bedfordshire estate, to which Amabel was coheir. In 1776, he was created Baron Hume of Berwick. In 1777, his health began to fail, and after a long decline, he died on 9 March 1781. In her diary, kept from 1769 to 1827, Amabel mourned the loss of "the friend & protector I had hop'd for". She then divided her time between Wrest, London, and (from 1791) her villa on Putney Heath, with London usually accounting for about half the year. On the death of her mother in 1797, she inherited the family houses at Wrest and 4 St. James's Square, and the title Baroness Lucas. In 1816, she was created Countess de Grey, of Wrest, in the County of Bedford, with a special remainder, failing heirs male of her body, to her sister and the heirs male of her body.

The countess's diary and her correspondence reveal an intense interest in politics. It was a matter of lifelong frustration that, being a woman, she could not be elected to the Commons or, later, take her place in the House of Lords. She told her mother on 21 November 1775 that if she were in Parliament, she would certainly have voted for the Rockingham party's amendments to the Militia Bill, and in 1811, she wrote:

She described herself as "an old English Whig" and her views were dominated by a desire not to upset the status quo. She noted that "most Reformers, though their cause may be good, yet are dangerous from their rash & impracticable notions".

In 1792, Amabel wrote "An Historical Sketch of the French Revolution from its Commencement to the Year 1792" and had it anonymously published by John Debrett. In 1796, she wrote "An historical essay on the ambition and conquests of France, with some remarks on the French Revolution", published in 1797, also anonymously. Debrett also accepted a pamphlet she described as "an appeal to the People of Britain", and "desir'd that the unknown author would send any other work to him". No other crisis provoked her to write until the assassination of Spencer Perceval in 1812, when she discussed the possibility of a pamphlet directly with John Hatchard. She died on 4 March 1833 at St James's Square, aged 81, and was buried at the de Grey Mausoleum in Flitton, Bedfordshire. She was succeeded in her titles and estates by her nephew Thomas Philip Weddell.

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