The younger son of the 5th Duke of Rutland, he enjoyed the courtesy title of Marquess of Granby and was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Entering the House of Commons in 1841, Granby and his friend George Smythe (later 7th Viscount Strangford) became disciples of the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, who memorialized them in his novel Coningsby (1844) as Lord Henry Sidney and Harry Coningsby, respectively. After serving as postmaster general under Disraeli (1874–80) and the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1885–86), Granby succeeded to the dukedom of Rutland (1888) upon the death of his elder brother, the 6th duke, in 1879.

The Young Englanders looked back to an imaginary golden age in which the landowning aristocracy treated with benevolent paternalism a prosperous and grateful peasantry. Rutland emphasized the responsibility that the wealthy bear, both that of the old landowners toward their tenants and that of the new industrialists toward their labourers.