William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne
Encyclopedia
William Waldegrave Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne KG
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...

, GCMG
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....

, PC (17 October 1859 – 26 February 1942), styled Viscount Wolmer between 1882 and 1895, was a British politician and colonial administrator.

Background and education

Selborne was the son of Lord Chancellor
Lord Chancellor
The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, or Lord Chancellor, is a senior and important functionary in the government of the United Kingdom. He is the second highest ranking of the Great Officers of State, ranking only after the Lord High Steward. The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Sovereign...

 Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne
Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne
Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne PC , was a British lawyer and politician. He served twice as Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.-Background and education:...

, and Lady Laura, daughter of Vice-Admiral William Waldegrave, 8th Earl Waldegrave
William Waldegrave, 8th Earl Waldegrave
Vice-Admiral William Waldegrave, 8th Earl Waldegrave, CB was a British naval commander and politician.Waldegrave was the son of the 4th Earl Waldegrave and was educated at Eton. In 1802, he became a Midshipman in the Royal Navy, rising to the ranks of Lieutenant in 1806 and Commander in 1809...

. He was educated at Winchester
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...

 and University College, Oxford
University College, Oxford
.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

, where he took a first class degree in history.

1882 - 1910

Selborne was assistant private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...

, Hugh Childers
Hugh Childers
Hugh Culling Eardley Childers was a British and Australian Liberal statesman of the nineteenth century. He is perhaps best known for his reform efforts at the Admiralty and the War Office...

, from 1882 to 1885, when he was elected Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for East Hampshire
East Hampshire (UK Parliament constituency)
East Hampshire is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election...

. Like his father, he became a Liberal Unionist
Liberal Unionist Party
The Liberal Unionist Party was a British political party that was formed in 1886 by a faction that broke away from the Liberal Party. Led by Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain, the party formed a political alliance with the Conservative Party in opposition to Irish Home Rule...

 in 1886 when William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 proposed Irish Home Rule. He retained his seat till 1892, when he was elected for Edinburgh West
Edinburgh West (UK Parliament constituency)
Edinburgh West is a burgh constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom , first used in the 1885 general election...

. In 1895 he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies
Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies
The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies was a junior Ministerial post in the United Kingdom government, subordinate to the Secretary of State for the Colonies and, from 1948, also to a Minister of State....

 by his father-in-law Lord Salisbury
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC , styled Lord Robert Cecil before 1865 and Viscount Cranborne from June 1865 until April 1868, was a British Conservative statesman and thrice Prime Minister, serving for a total of over 13 years...

, where he became junior to the Colonial Secretary
Secretary of State for the Colonies
The Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary was the British Cabinet minister in charge of managing the United Kingdom's various colonial dependencies....

 Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....

. During the difficult period before the outbreak of the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...

 he progressed rapidly.

In November 1900 Selborne was sworn of the Privy Council and made First Lord of the Admiralty under Salisbury, with a seat in the cabinet, an office he retained when Arthur Balfour
Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...

 became Prime Minister in 1902. In 1905 he succeeded Lord Milner
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner KG, GCB, GCMG, PC was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played an influential leadership role in the formulation of foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s...

 as High Commissioner for South Africa and governor of the Transvaal and Orange River
Orange River
The Orange River , Gariep River, Groote River or Senqu River is the longest river in South Africa. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean...

 colonies. He assumed office at Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...

 in May of that year. He had gone out with the intention of guiding the destinies of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 during a period when the ex-Boer
Boer
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...

 republics would be in a transitional state between crown colony government and self-government, and letters patent
Letters patent
Letters patent are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch or president, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, title, or status to a person or corporation...

 were issued granting the Transvaal representative institutions.

But the Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 came into office in Britain the following December, before the new constitution had been established, and, the decision was now taken to give both the Transvaal and Orange River colonies self-government without delay. Lord Selborne accepted the changed situation, and the experiment proved successful. He ceased to be governor of the Orange River Colony
Orange River Colony
The Orange River Colony was the British colony created after this nation first occupied and then annexed the independent Orange Free State in the Second Boer War...

 on its assumption of self-government in June 1907, but retained his other posts until May 1910, retiring on the eve of the establishment of the Union of South Africa
Union of South Africa
The Union of South Africa is the historic predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into being on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the previously separate colonies of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State...

.

The despatch, dated 7 January 1907 and known as the Selborne Memorandum, in which he reviewed the situation in its economic and political aspects, was a comprehensive statement of the dangers inherent in the existing system and of the advantages likely to attend union. The document had in fact been compiled by Lionel Curtis and other members of Milner's Kindergarten. The force of its appeal had a marked influence on the course of events, while the loyalty with which Lord Selborne co-operated with the Botha
Louis Botha
Louis Botha was an Afrikaner and first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa—the forerunner of the modern South African state...

 administration was an additional factor in reconciling the Dutch and British communities.

1910 - 1942

He returned to England with his reputation, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "as a statesman enhanced by the respect of all parties, and with a practical experience, second only to that of Lord Milner, of British imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 in successful operation." His experience made him a valuable ally in the movement among the Unionist party at home for Tariff Reform and Colonial Preference, to which he could now give his full support.

In 1915 Selborne returned to government during the First World War when he became President of the Board of Agriculture
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is a UK cabinet-level position in charge of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the successor to the positions of Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport...

 in the war time coalition of Liberal prime minister H. H. Asquith
H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916...

. He resigned the following year and did not hold high political office again. The Selborne Committee on Church and State from 1914 to 1916 was chaired by Lord Selborne.

Apart from his political career Selborne served as Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers
Worshipful Company of Mercers
The Worshipful Company of Mercers is the premier Livery Company of the City of London and ranks first in order of precedence. It is the first of the so-called "Great Twelve City Livery Companies". It was incorporated under a Royal Charter in 1394...

 in 1910 and 1933, as his father had done before him, in 1875. He was also Warden of Winchester College
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...

 between 1920 and 1925 and High Steward of Winchester
Winchester
Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of...

 between 1929 and 1942. He was made a Knight of the Garter
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...

 in 1909.

Family

Lord Selborne married Lady Maud Cecil, elder daughter of future Prime Minister Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, in 1883. They had three sons and one daughter. His second son, the Hon. Robert Palmer, was a Captain in the Hampshire Regiment and was killed on active service in 1916. His letters home were privately published as Letters from Mesopotamia. Lord Selborne died in February 1942, aged 82, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Roundell, Viscount Wolmer
Roundell Palmer, 3rd Earl of Selborne
Roundell Cecil Palmer, 3rd Earl of Selborne, CH, PC was a British Conservative politician, known as Viscount Wolmer from 1895 to 1941....

, who had already the previous year been summoned to the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

 through a writ of acceleration
Writ of acceleration
A writ in acceleration, commonly called a writ of acceleration, was a type of writ of summons to the British House of Lords that enabled the eldest son and heir apparent of a peer with multiple peerage titles to attend the British House of Lords or Irish House of Lords, using one of his father's...

 in his father's junior title of Baron Selborne. The Countess of Selborne died in April 1950.

External links

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