Farrer was educated at a grammar school in South London and attended lectures at the University of Bonn as a teenager, where his family lived for six months in 1852.[3] In 1857 he took his BA degree with honours in Greek and mathematics at University College London, receiving prizes in logic and political economy.[4][1] He was regarded as the best speaker at the University College London Union Debating Society and was editor of a University Review along with R.D. Littler.[2][3] He later served as an examiner in common law for the University of London from 1872 to 1876.[4]
For four or five years he did not obtain much work, although he was financially secure. He spoke to Charles Russell and William Court Gully about the possibility of leaving England and instead working for the British Consular Courts in China.[1][6] 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.[2] In 1872, Herschell took silk[7] and the following year, he became Recorder of Carlisle.[8]
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.[2] He also prominently opposed the Fugitive Slave Circular. In 1878, he also pointed out the unconstitutionality of Lord Hartington's proposal to censure the government for bringing Indian troops to Malta.[3] He was noticed by Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who in 1880 appointed Herschell Solicitor General.[2]
He also drafted the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 which halved the representation of Durham City, thus requiring him to quit his seat.[2] Betting on the local support of the Cavendish family, he contested the North Lonsdale division of Lancashire, but in spite of the powerful influence of Lord Hartington, he was badly beaten at the poll. Gladstone, however, again obtained a majority in Parliament. Herschell felt the Solicitor General's post slipping away from him, and along with it all prospects of promotion. Lord Selborne and Sir Henry James, however, successively declined Gladstone's offer of the Woolsack, and Herschell suddenly found himself Lord Chancellor.[2]
On 6 February 1886, he became Lord Chancellor and was sworn of the Privy Council.[11] He was also elevated to the peerage as Baron Herschell of the city of Durham.[12] 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).[13] 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.[2]
He was perhaps seen at his judicial best in Vagliano v. Bank of England (1891) and Allen v. Flood (1898). Latterly he showed a tendency to interrupt counsel overmuch. The latter case is an example of this. The question involved was what constituted a "molestation of a man in the pursuit of his lawful calling". At the close of the argument of counsel, whom he had frequently interrupted, one of their lordships observed that although there might be a doubt as to what amounted to such molestation in point of law, the House could well understand, after that day's proceedings, what it was in actual practice.[2]
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.[2]
His characteristic power of detachment was well illustrated by his treatment of the proposal to remove the university to the site of the Imperial Institute at South Kensington. Although he was then chairman of the institute, the most irreconcilable opponent of the removal never questioned his absolute impartiality. Herschell had been officially connected with the Imperial Institute from its inception. He was chairman of the provisional committee appointed by EdwardPrince of Wales to formulate a scheme for its organisation, and he took an active part in the preparation of its royal charter and constitution in conjunction with Lord Thring, Lord James, Sir Frederick Abel and Sir John Hollams. He was the first chairman of its council, and, except during his tour in India in 1888, when he brought the institute to the notice of the Indian authorities, he was hardly absent from a single meeting. For his special services in this connection he received the Order of the Bath in 1893,[2] this being the only instance of a Lord Chancellor being decorated with an order.[citation needed] In 1893 he became, at its foundation, president of the Society of Comparative Legislation.[2]
In 1897 he was appointed, jointly with Lord Justice Collins, to represent Great Britain on the Venezuela Boundary Commission, which met in Paris in the spring of 1899. Such a complicated business involved a careful study of maps and historic documents. Not content with this, he accepted in 1898 a seat on the Anglo-American Arbitration Commission[16] appointed to adjudicate in the Alaska boundary dispute and to adjust boundaries and other important questions pending between Great Britain and Canada on the one hand and the United States on the other hand. He started for the US in July of that year, and was received cordially at Washington D.C.. His fellow commissioners elected him their president.[2]
A funeral service held in St John's Episcopal Church, Washington, was attended by the president and vice-president of the United States, by the cabinet ministers, the judges of the Supreme Court, the members of the joint high commission, and a large number of senators and other representative men.[3] The body was brought to London in a British man-of-war, HMS Talbot[21] 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.[1][2]
^University of Glasgow History of Art / HATII (2011). "Lady (Agnes) Freda Forres OBE". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain & Ireland 1851–1951. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
.svg)
