Herbert Henry Asquith
|
|
| |
| Period in Office | April, 1908 – December, 1916 |
|---|---|
| PM Predecessor | Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman |
| PM Successor | David Lloyd George |
| Date of Birth | 12 September 1852 |
| Place of Birth | Morley, Yorkshire |
| Political Party | Liberal |
| Retirement honour | Earldom of Oxford and Asquith |
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (September 12, 1852 – February 15, 1928) served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916.
| Contents |
Biography
Born in Morley, Yorkshire and educated at Fulneck School, West Yorkshire and the City of London School, he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. After graduation he became a barrister and was called to the bar in 1876. He became prosperous in the early 1880s from practising law. He married Helen Kelsall Melland, daughter of a Manchester doctor, in 1877 and they had four sons and one daughter before she died from typhoid in 1891. In 1894, he remarried, his second wife being Margot Tennant, the daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet. Several children were born to him by his second wife, but only a son and daughter survived past infancy. In his younger days he was called Herbert within the family, but his second wife called him Henry. However, in public he was invariably referred to only as H.H. Asquith. "There have been few major national figures whose Christian names were less well known to the public," writes his biographer, Roy Jenkins. Thus, references by historians to Asquith in his Prime Ministerial days as "Herbert Asquith" are doubly incorrect, and only in sources using full legal names should he be called by his.
Elected to Parliament in 1886 as the Liberal representative for East Fife, he achieved his first significant post in 1892 when he became Home Secretary under Gladstone. The Liberals went out of power for ten years from 1895, and he turned down an offer to lead the party in 1898.
The Liberal Party won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election, and Asquith became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He demonstrated his staunch support of free trade in this post. Campbell-Bannerman resigned due to illness in April 1908 and Asquith succeeded him as Prime Minister.
Asquith's government
The Asquith government became involved in an expensive naval arms race with Germany and began an extensive social welfare programme, introducing government pensions in 1908. The social welfare programme proved controversial, and Asquith's government faced severe (and sometimes barely legal) resistance from the Conservative Party. This came to a head in 1909, when David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, produced a deliberately provocative "People's Budget". The Conservatives, determined to stop passage, used their majority in the House of Lords to reject the bill. The Lords did not traditionally interfere with finance bills and their actions thus provoked a constitutional crisis, forcing the country to a general election in January 1910. The Liberals were returned with a majority, though one much reduced from their 1906 landslide.
The nuclear option in this situation was to have King Edward VII threaten to pack the House of Lords with freshly-minted Liberal peers, who would override the Lords' veto. With the Conservatives remaining recalcitrant in spring of 1910, Asquith began contemplating such an option. King Edward VII agreed to do so, after another general election, but he avoided the whole situation by dying in May 1910. His son, King George V, was reluctant to have his first act in office be the carrying out of such a drastic attack on the aristocracy and it required all of Asquith's considerable powers to convince him to make the promise. This the King finally did before the second election of 1910, in December. The Liberals again won, though their majority was now dependent on peers from Ireland, who had their own price. Nonetheless, Asquith was able to curb the powers of the House of Lords through the Parliament Act 1911, which essentially broke the power of the House of Lords. The Lords could now delay, but not defeat outright, a bill passed by the Commons. The price of Irish support in this effort was the Third Irish Home Rule Bill, which Asquith delivered in legislation that was ultimately suspended owing to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Asquith's efforts over Irish Home Rule nearly provoked a civil war in Ireland over Northern Ireland, only averted by the outbreak of a European war.
Asquith headed the Liberal government into the war. However following a Cabinet split in May 1915, caused by the Shell Crisis, he became head of a new coalition government, bringing senior figures from the Opposition into the Cabinet. But his performance over the conduct of the war dissatisified certain Liberals and the Conservative Party. Opponents partially blamed a series of political and military disasters (including the failed offensives at the Somme and Gallipoli (1915–1916)) and the Easter Rising in Ireland (April 1916) on Asquith. Acting to displace the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George managed to split the Liberals and, on December 5, 1916, Asquith resigned. Lloyd George became head of the coalition two days later.
After his resignation
H-H-Asquith-arms.PNG
Asquith remained leader of the Liberal Party after 1916 and even after losing his seat in the 1918 elections. He returned to the House of Commons in a 1920 by-election. Asquith played a major role in putting the minority Labour government of 1924 into office, elevating Ramsay MacDonald to the Prime Ministership.
Raised to the peerage as Viscount Asquith, of Morley in the West Riding of the County of York, and Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925, Asquith retired to the House of Lords after losing his seat again in the 1924 election held after the fall of the Labour government. Lloyd George succeeded him as chairman of the Liberal Members of Parliament, but Asquith remained head of the party until 1926, when Lloyd George succeeded him in that position as well, healing the split in the Liberal Party.
Asquith's death and descendants
Asquith died in 1928. His second wife Margot outlived him, dying in 1945. His only daughter by his first wife, Violet (later Violet Bonham-Carter), became a well-regarded writer and a Life Peeress in her own right. His eldest son Raymond Asquith was killed at the Somme in 1916, and thus his peerage passed to the latter's only son Julian, now 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith (born 1916) a few months before his father's death. Another son Cyril became a Law Lord, and two other sons married well, one being the poet Herbert Asquith (who is often confused with his father). His two children by Margot were Elizabeth (later Princess Antoine Bibesco), a writer, and Anthony Asquith, a well-known film-maker whose productions include The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy.
Among his descendants are the actress Helena Bonham-Carter and the wife of former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond.
First Government, April 1908 – May 1915
- H.H. Asquith - Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons
- Lord Loreburn - Lord Chancellor
- Lord Tweedmouth - Lord President of the Council
- Lord Ripon - Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords
- David Lloyd George - Chancellor of the Exchequer
- Herbert John Gladstone - Secretary of State for the Home Department
- Sir Edward Grey - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
- Lord Crewe - Secretary of State for the Colonies
- Richard Burdon Haldane - Secretary of State for War
- Lord Morley - Secretary of State for India
- Reginald McKenna - First Lord of the Admiralty
- Lord Wolverhampton - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
- Winston Churchill - President of the Board of Trade
- Lord Pentland - Secretary for Scotland
- Augustine Birrell - Chief Secretary for Ireland
- John Burns - President of the Local Government Board
- Lord Carrington - President of the Board of Agriculture
- Walter Runciman - President of the Board of Education
- Sydney Buxton - Postmaster-General
- Lewis Harcourt - First Commissioner of Public Works
Changes
- September 1908 - Lord Wolverhampton succeeds Lord Tweedmouth as Lord President. Lord FitzMaurice succeeds Lord Wolverhampton as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
- October 1908 - Lord Crewe succeeds Lord Ripon as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, while remaining also Colonial Secretary.
- June 1909 - Herbert Samuel succeeds Lord FitzMaurice at the Duchy of Lancaster.
- February 1910 - Winston Churchill succeeds Herbert Gladstone as Home Secretary. Sydney Buxton succeeds Churchill at the Board of Trade. Herbert Samuel succeeds Buxton as Postmaster-General. Joseph Pease succeeds Samuel as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
- June 1910 - Lord Beauchamp succeeds Lord Wolverhampton as Lord President.
- November 1910 - Lord Beauchamp succeeds Lewis Vernon Harcourt as First Commissioner of Public Works. Lord Morley succeeds Beauchamp as Lord President. Lord Crewe succeeds Morley as India Secretary, remaining also Lord Privy Seal. Lewis Harcourt succeeds Crewe as Colonial Secretary.
- October 1911 - Winston Churchill and Reginald McKenna switch offices, Churchill taking the Admiralty and McKenna the Home Office. Lord Carrington succeeds Lord Crewe as Lord Privy Seal. Crewe remains India Secretary. Walter Runciman succeeds Lord Carrington at the Board of Agriculture. Joseph Albert Pease succeeds Runciman at the Board of Education. Sir Charles Edward Henry Hobhouse succeeds Pease at the Duchy of Lancaster.
- February 1912 - Lord Crewe succeeds Lord Carrington as Lord Privy Seal, remaining also India Secretary. Thomas MacKinnon Wood succeeds Lord Pentland as Secretary for Scotland.
- June 1912 - The Attorney-General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, enters the Cabinet. Lord Haldane succeeds Lord Loreburn as Lord Chancellor. John Seely succeeds Haldane as Secretary for War.
- 1913 - Sir John Allsebrooke Simon succeeds Sir Rufus Isaacs as Attorney-General.
- February, 1914 - John Burns succeeds Sydney Buxton as President of the Board of Trade. Herbert Samuel succeeds Burns at the Local Government Board. Sir Charles Edward Henry Hobhouse succeeds Samuel as Postmaster-General. Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman succeeds Hobhouse at the Duchy of Lancaster.
- March, 1914 - Asquith temporarily succeeds Seely as Secretary for War.
- August, 1914 - Lord Beauchamp succeeds Lord Morley as Lord President. Lord Emmott succeeds Beauchamp as First Commissioner of Public Works. Walter Runciman succeeds John Burns as President of the Board of Trade. Lord Lucas succeeds Runciman at the Board of Agriculture. Lord Kitchener succeeds Asquith as Secretary for War.
- January, 1915 - Edwin Samuel Montagu succeeds Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Second Government, May 1915 – December 1916
- H.H. Asquith - Prime Minister
- Lord Buckmaster - Lord Chancellor
- Lord Crewe - Lord President of the Council
- Lord Curzon - Lord Privy Seal
- Reginald McKenna - Chancellor of the Exchequer
- Sir John Allsebrook Simon - Secretary of State for the Home Department
- Sir Edward Grey - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
- Andrew Bonar Law - Secretary of State for the Colonies
- Lord Kitchener - Secretary of State for War
- Austen Chamberlain - Secretary of State for India
- Arthur James Balfour - First Lord of the Admiralty
- Winston Churchill - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
- Walter Runciman - President of the Board of Trade
- Thomas MacKinnon Wood - Secretary for Scotland
- Augustine Birrell - Chief Secretary for Ireland
- Walter Hume Long - President of the Local Government Board
- Lord Selborne - President of the Board of Agriculture
- Arthur Henderson - President of the Board of Education
- Lewis Vernon Harcourt - First Commissioner of Public Works
- David Lloyd George - Minister of Munitions
- Sir Edward Carson - Attorney-General
- Lord Robert Cecil - Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs
- Lord Lansdowne - Minister without Portfolio
Changes
- October, 1915 - Sir Frederick Smith succeeds Sir Edward Carson as Attorney-General.
- November, 1915 - Edwin Stanley Montagu succeeds Churchill at the Duchy of Lancaster
- January, 1916 - Sir Herbert Samuel succeeds Sir John Simon as Home Secretary. Lord Robert Cecil becomes Minister of Blockade.
- June, 1916 -
- July, 1916 - On the death of Lord Kitchener, David Lloyd George succeeds him as Secretary for War. Edwin Samuel Montagu succeeds Lloyd George at the Ministry of Munitions. Thomas MacKinnon Wood succeeds Montagu at the Duchy of Lancaster. Harold John Tennant succeeds Wood as Scottish Secretary. Lord Crawford succeeds Lord Selborne at the Agriculture Board. Henry Edward Duke succeeds Augustine Birrell as Chief Secretary for Ireland.
- August, 1916 - Arthur Henderson becomes Paymaster General. Lord Crewe succeeds Arthur Henderson at the Education Board.
- October, 1916 - Sir Edward Carson resigns as Attorney General.
Miscellaneous
Asquith was one of a select group of historical persons who are numerologically interesting because their birth date and their death date are numerical anagrams of each other. 12 September 1852 = 12.9.1852; 15 February 1928 = 15.2.1928. These both contain the group of numbers 1122589. Other people who have a similar pattern in their dates are the soprano Tatiana Troyanos, the pianist Geoffrey Parsons, and the actor Victor Jory.
External links
| Preceded by: Henry Matthews | Home Secretary 1892–1895 | Succeeded by: Sir Matthew White Ridley | |||
| Preceded by: Austen Chamberlain | Chancellor of the Exchequer 1905–1908 | Succeeded by: David Lloyd George | |||
| Preceded by: John Edward Seely | War Secretary 1914 | Succeeded by: The Earl Kitchener of Khartoum
|
Categories: 1852 births | 1928 deaths | Natives of Yorkshire | British Prime Ministers | British Secretaries of State | Chancellors of the Exchequer | Knights of the Garter | World War I people | Leaders of the British Liberal Party | Presidents of the Oxford Union | Earls in the Peerage of the United Kingdom