Selborne, ROUNDELL PALMER, EARL OF

Selborne, ROUNDELL PALMER, EARL OF, was born at Mixbury Rectory, Oxfordshire, November 27, 1812, and had his education at Rugby and Winchester and at Trinity College, Oxford. His course was exceptionally brilliant; he carried off the Chancellor's prize for Latin verse (1831), the Newdigate (1832), the Ireland scholarship (1832), took a classical first-class in 1834, was elected to a Magdalen fellowship, and took both the Chancellor's prize for the Latin essay (1835) and the Eldon Law scholarship. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1837, and became a Q.C. in 1849; sat for Plymouth in the House of Commons from 1847 till 1852, and again from 1853 till 1857; became Solicitor-general in 1861 under Palmerston, being at the same time knighted and returned for Richmond; and was Attorney-general from 1863 till the fall of the Russell government in 1866. His inability to accept Mr Gladstone's whole Irish Church policy prevented his accepting the Chancellorship in 1868, but he succeeded Lord Hatherley in 1872, and was created Baron Selborne. The year before he had represented the government as counsel before the Arbitration Court at Geneva. Selborne was ever active as a reformer in legal procedure, and his reign will remain memorable from the fusion of law and equity effected by his Judicature Act (1873). He fell with his party in February 1874, but returned to the woolsack in May 1880, and sat till the dissolution of 1885. He was raised to the rank of Earl of Selborne in 1882. He found himself unable to accept Mr Gladstone's Irish policy, and therefore in February 1886 declined a third term of office. Chairman of the Oxford University Commission, he was made D.C.L. (1863), and was Lord Rector of St Andrews University in 1877. His Book of Praise (1863; 9th ed. 1892) is an admirable collection of hymns. Other books are Notes on some Passages in the Liturgical History of the Reformed English Church (1878), A Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment (1886), and Ancient Facts and Fictions as to Churches and Tithes (1888). He died 4th May 1895. See his Memorials (2 vols. 1896).