Farrer Herschell, 1st Baron Herschell, (2 November 1837 – 1 March 1899), was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain in 1886, and again from 1892 to 1895.

Life

Childhood and education

Herschell was born on 2 November 1837 in Brampton, Hampshire. His parents were Helen Skirving Mowbray and the Rev. Ridley Haim Herschell, who was a native of Strzelno, in Prussian Poland. When Ridley was a young man, he converted from Judaism to Christianity and took a leading part in founding the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews. He eventually settled down to the charge of a Nonconformist chapel near the Edgware Road, in London, where he ministered to a large congregation. In 1857 he took his BA degree with honours in Greek and mathematics at University College London, receiving prizes in logic and political economy. He subsequently read with James Hannen, who went on to become Lord Hannen. His fellow pupils gave him the sobriquet "Chief Baron" because of his air of superiority. However, Herschell soon made himself useful to Edward James, the then leader of the Northern Circuit, and to John Richard Quain, the leading stuffgownsman. For the latter he noted briefs and drafted legal opinions. When, in 1866, Quain took silk, Herschell inherited much of his junior practice. and the following year, he became Recorder of Carlisle.

Member of Parliament

By 1874, his business had become so good that he turned his thoughts to politics and election to Parliament. In February of that year there was a general election, with the result that the Conservative Party came into power with a parliamentary majority of fifty. The two Radicals, Thomas Charles Thompson and John Henderson who had been returned for City of Durham were unseated, and an attack was then made on the seats of two other Radicals, Isaac Lowthian Bell and Charles Mark Palmer who had been returned for North Durham. Herschell was briefed for one of the latter. He made such an impression on the local Radical leaders that they asked him to stand for City of Durham. After two weeks' electioneering, he was elected as junior member.

Between 1874 and 1880, Herschell was assiduous in his attendance of the House of Commons. He was not a frequent speaker, but his few efforts garnered him a favourable reputation as a debater. On one occasion, he carried a resolution in favour of abolishing actions for breach of promise of marriage except when actual pecuniary loss had ensued, the damages in such cases to be measured by the amount of such loss. within weeks of his appointment as Solicitor General, a position he was to hold until 1885. During this time, he turned down positions as a Lord of Appeal and Master of the Rolls. He was also elevated to the peerage as Baron Herschell of the city of Durham. However, his first chancellorship lasted barely four months, because in June 1886 Gladstone's Home Rule Bill was rejected in the Commons and his ministry fell.

In August 1892, when Gladstone returned to power, Herschell again became Lord Chancellor. In May 1893, he was appointed to the Order of the Bath as a Knight Grand Cross (GCB). In September 1893, when the second Home Rule BiIl came on for second reading in the House of Lords, Herschell took advantage of the opportunity to justify his own 1885 sudden conversion to Home Rule, and that of his colleagues, by comparing it to the Duke of Wellington's conversion to Catholic emancipation in 1829 and to that of Sir Robert Peel to Free Trade in 1846. In 1895, however, his second chancellorship came to an end with the defeat of the Rosebery ministry. and of the County of Kent in 1890. In 1888 he presided over an inquiry directed by the House of Commons, with regard to the Metropolitan Board of Works. He acted as chairman of two royal commissions, one on Indian currency, the other on vaccination. In 1890, he was appointed Captain of Deal Castle and Warden of the Cinque Ports. He took a great interest in the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, not only promoting the acts of 1889 and 1894, but also in sifting the truth of allegations which had been brought against the management of that society.

In June 1893 he was appointed chancellor of the University of London succeeding the Earl of Derby. His views of reform, according to Victor Dickins, the accomplished registrar of the university, were liberal and frankly stated, though at first they were not altogether popular. He disarmed opposition by his intellectual power, rather than conciliated it by compromise, and sometimes was perhaps a little forceful in his approach various matters of controversy. His constitution, which at one time was a robust one, had been undermined by constant hard work, and proved unequal to sustaining the shock. On 1 March, only two weeks after the accident, he died at the Shoreham Hotel, Washington, a post-mortem examination revealing heart disease. John Hay, United States Secretary of State, at once telegraphed to Joseph Hodges Choate, the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, the deep sorrow felt by President William McKinley. The prime minister of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, said the next day in the Canadian House of Commons that he regarded Herschell's death as a misfortune to Canada and to the British Empire. and a second funeral service was held in Westminster Abbey, which was attended by Lord Halsbury, Lord Kimberley, Arthur Balfour and other representatives of the British, American, and Canadian governments. He was buried on 22 March 1899 at Tincleton, Dorset, in the parish church where he had been married. They left a son, Richard Herschell (1878–1929), who succeeded as second baron, and three daughters: Helen Mowbray Herschell, Muriel Fanny Herschell, and Agnes Freda Forres.

He was a member of a number of social clubs, including Brooks's, the Athenaenum Club, the Windham Club, the Devonshire Club, and the National Liberal Club.

Arms

Judgments

  • Creen v Wright (1875–76) LR 1 CPD 591
  • Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd [1896] UKHL 1
  • Trevor v Whitworth (1887) 12 App Cas 409; the House of Lords held that share buybacks were unlawful.
  • The Arrow Shipping Company v The Tyne Improvement Commissioners (or The Crystal) [1894] AC 509
  • Mara v Browne (1895)
  • McEntire v Crossley Brothers, 13 May 1895, applied in a later recharacterisation case, Welsh Development Agency v Export Finance Co Ltd. (1992)
  • Provincial Fisheries Reference [1898] UKPC 30

References

Bibliography

  • Brewer, D. J. (1899) Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, July
  • Fairbanks, C. W. (1899) Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, July
  • William Gully, 1st Viscount Selby (1899) Law Quarterly Review, April
  • Jacobs, J., & Lipkind, G. (1906) "Herschell, Lord Farrer", Jewish Encyclopedia, vol.VI, p.363
  • James, H. (1899) Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, July
  • Williamson, V. (1899) Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, July