James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury

James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury

James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury KG GCVO CB PC DL JP TD (born October 23, 1861 in London ; † April 4, 1947 ibid) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who between 1885 and 1903 with a Interrupted was a member of the House of Commons .

In 1903 he inherited the title of 4th Marquess of Salisbury and the subordinate titles of nobility and was thus a member of the House of Lords until his death . He was Lord Keeper of the Seal from 1903 to 1905 , briefly Minister of Commerce in 1905 (President of the Board of Trade ) , Lord President of the Council between 1922 and 1924 , Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1922 to 1923 and again Lord Keeper of the Seal between 1924 and 1929. As Lord High Steward , he was one of the participants in the coronation procession of King George VI in 1937 .

Life

Family origins and siblings

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury , the father of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times

James Gascoyne-Cecil was the eldest son of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury , who was Secretary of State several times and Prime Minister three times , and his wife Georgina Alderson, daughter of barrister Edward Hall Alderson , the judge of the Court of Common Pleas for England and Wales and temporarily Baron of the Exchequer .

His older sister, Lady Beatrix Maud Cecil, was the wife of William Waldegrave Palmer , who was named 2nd Earl of Selborne in 1895 and, among other things, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1900 to 1905 . Another older sister was Lady Gwendolen Cecil, who remained unmarried and published a two-volume biography about her father in 1921 entitled The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury , while his other older sister, Fanny Georgina Mildred Cecil, died in childhood.

A younger brother was the clergyman Rupert Ernest William Gascoyne-Cecil , who was last Bishop of Exeter from 1916 until his death in 1936 .

His younger brother Edgar Algernon Robert Cecil was also a member of the House of Commons from 1906 to 1923, Minister for Blockade during the First World War from 1916 to 1918 and, like his older brother James Gascoyne-Cecil, held the offices of Lord Seal Keeper and Chancellor in the 1920s of the Duchy of Lancaster. In 1924 he was raised to the rank of nobility as the 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood and thus a member of the House of Lords and in 1937 the Nobel Peace Prize.

Another younger brother was Lord Edward Herbert Gascoyne-Cecil , who served as a colonel in the British Protectorate Administration in Egypt and received several awards.

His youngest brother was Hugh Richard Heathcote Gascoyne-Cecil , who was from 1895 to 1906 and again between 1910 and 1937 a member of the lower house and in 1941 as 1st Baron Quickswood was also raised to the nobility and thereby became a member of the upper house.

Studies, Member of the House of Commons and Undersecretary of State

Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour was James Gascoyne-Cecil's first cousin

After attending the renowned Eton College, James Gascoyne-Cecil began studying at the University College of the University of Oxford , graduating in 1885 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA).

Shortly after graduation, he was on 24 November 1885 as the candidate of the conservative Tories first elected as member of the House of Commons and represented in this until June 4, 1892 the from the previous constituency North-East Lancashire newly created constituency Darwen . During this time he also completed postgraduate studies at University College, Oxford University, which he completed in 1889 with a Master of Arts (MA).

On February 8, 1893, he was re-elected a member of the House of Commons and represented the constituency of Rochester there until August 22, 1903 . Gascoyne-Cecil, who temporarily as justices of the peace (justice of the peace) of the county Hertfordshire acted took 1899 to 1900 at the Second Boer War in part and in 1900 to Companion of the Order of the Bath called (CB).

1900 Gascoyne-Cecil took his first government post in the third cabinet of his father Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs ) and held this position even after his first cousin, Arthur James Balfour on July 11, 1902 had assumed the office of Prime Minister until October 17, 1903. In 1903 he also held the position of High Steward of Westminster for a time .

Member of the House of Lords, Lord Seal Keeper and Minister of Commerce

After the death of his father, James Gascoyne-Cecil inherited the title of 4th Marquess of Salisbury on August 22, 1903 and was thus a member of the House of Lords until his death. At the same time he inherited the subordinate titles as 10th Earl of Salisbury , 10th Viscount Cranborne, in the County of Dorset and 10th Baron Cecil, of Essendon in the County of Rutland .

As part of a cabinet reshuffle, he took over from Prime Minister Balfour on October 17, 1903 for the first time the office of Lord Privy Seal , which he had previously held himself and held this ministerial office until the end of Balfour's tenure on December 4, 1905 also member of the Privy Council (PC). From March to December 1905 he also held the office of Minister of Commerce (President of the Board of Trade) , which he had taken over from another first cousin, Arthur Balfour's younger brother, Gerald Balfour .

In addition, the 4th Marquess of Salisbury was aide-de-camp of King Edward VII between 1903 and 1910 and also High Steward of Hertford in 1905 and, in December 1908, Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. Afterwards Gascoyne-Cecil, who was knighted to the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) in 1909 , was aide-de-camp of King George V from 1910 to 1929 .

He was also Knight of the Order of the Garter (KG) in 1917 and was awarded the Territorial Decoration (TD) for his services as Colonel of Honor in the 86th East Anglican Hertfordshire Yeomanry Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War . He was one of the leading lords in the House of Lords, who exposed and sharply denounced Lloyd George's practice of selling nobility titles en masse in order to use the proceeds to build up a personal campaign fund. As a leading representative of the right-wing to reactionary wing of the conservatives, he toyed with the idea of ​​forming a right-wing Tory party in the early 1920s. By the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922, the unity of the party was preserved.

Lord President of the Council and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

On October 24, 1922, the 4th Marquess of Salisbury was appointed by the new Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law as Lord President of the Council in his cabinet and held this position as President of the Privy Council also in the subsequent cabinet of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin until the end of his term in office on January 22, 1924. At the same time he served in the cabinet of Andrew Bonar Law from October 24, 1922 until his replacement by JCC Davidson on May 25, 1923 as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) .

After Stanley Baldwin had again taken over the office of Prime Minister on November 6, 1924 after the clear victory in the general election of October 29, 1924 , the 4th Marquess of Salisbury was again Lord Keeper of the Seal and held this office until the end of Baldwin's term of office on May 4. June 1929. At the same time, after the death of George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston on March 20, 1925, on April 27, 1925, he also took on the role of Leader of the House of Lords and held this position until April 4 , 1925 . June 1929. 1926 was it by the University College of Oxford University, a honorary doctorate in civil law DCL (honorary doctor of civil law) awarded.

As Lord High Steward , he was one of the participants in the coronation procession of King George VI in 1937.

Marriage and offspring

James Gascoyne-Cecil was married to Lady Cicely Alice Gore since May 17, 1887, whose father Arthur Gore, 5th Earl of Arran , was Lord Lieutenant of County Mayo between 1889 and 1901 .

From this marriage two daughters and two sons were born. The eldest daughter, Lady Beatrice Edith Mildred Gascoyne-Cecil, was married to William Ormsby-Gore , who between 1908 and 1938 represented the Conservative Party as a member of the House of Commons and, among other things, was Postmaster General , Minister for Public Works (First Commissioner of Works) and Minister for the Colonies (Secretary of State for the Colonies) was and in 1938 as 4th Baron Harlech member of the House of Lords.

His eldest son was Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil , who was also a Member of the House of Commons between 1929 and 1941. After leaving the House of Commons, he inherited the title of 10th Baron Cecil while his father was still alive in 1941 , so that he was already a member of the House of Lords due to this regulation called Writ of Acceleration . On the death of his father, he inherited the title of 5th Marquess of Salisbury and the subordinate titles and held numerous ministerial offices in the governments of the Conservative Party.

The younger daughter, Lady Mary Alice Gascoyne-Cecil, was married to Edward William Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington , the eldest son of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire , and Evelyn Emily Mary FitzMaurice , and later Duchess of Devonshire . She was also Chief Chamberlain ( Mistress of the Robes ) of Queen Elizabeth II from 1953 to 1967 and Chancellor of the University of Exeter between 1955 and 1972 .

The youngest son was the recognized literary scholar and university professor Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil , who received the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1929 for his biography on William Cowper , published under the title The Stricken Deer: or The Life of Cowper .

Web links

• Viscount Cranborne at Hansard (English)
• Entry in Cracroft's Peerage
• Entry in Leigh Rayment Peerage
• James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury, on thepeerage.com , accessed July 26, 2015.

predecessor	Office	successor
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil	Marquess of Salisbury 1903-1947	Robert Gascoyne-Cecil
St John Brodrick	Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1900–1903	Henry Percy
Arthur Balfour	Keeper of the Lord Seal 1903–1945	George Robinson
Gerald Balfour	President of the Board of Trade 1905	David Lloyd George
William Sutherland	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1922-1923	JCC Davidson
Arthur Balfour	Lord President of the Council 1922-1924	Charles Cripps
John Robert Clynes	Keeper of the Lord Seal 1924–1929	James Henry Thomas
George Curzon	Leader of the House of Lords 1925-1929	Charles Cripps