Thomas Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote explained

Honorific-Prefix:The Right Honourable
The Viscount Caldecote
Office:Lord Chief Justice of England
Term Start:14 October 1940
Term End:23 January 1946
Predecessor:The Viscount Hewart
Successor:The Lord Goddard
Order1:Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain
Term Start1:3 September 1939
Term End1:12 May 1940
Monarch1:George VI
Primeminister1:Neville Chamberlain
Predecessor1:The Lord Maugham
Successor1:The Viscount Simon
Order2:Leader of the House of Lords
Term Start2:14 May 1940
Term End2:3 October 1940
Primeminister2:Winston Churchill
Predecessor2:The Earl Stanhope
Successor2:The Viscount Halifax
Order3:Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs
Term Start3:14 May 1940
Term End3:3 October 1940
Primeminister3:Winston Churchill
Predecessor3:Anthony Eden
Successor3:Viscount Cranborne
Term Start4:29 January 1939
Term End4:3 September 1939
Primeminister4:Neville Chamberlain
Predecessor4:Malcolm MacDonald
Successor4:Anthony Eden
Order5:Minister for Coordination of Defence
Term Start5:13 March 1936
Term End5:29 January 1939
Primeminister5:Stanley Baldwin
Neville Chamberlain
Predecessor5:New Office
Successor5:The Lord Chatfield
Office6:Attorney-General for England
Term Start6:26 January 1932
Term End6:18 March 1936
Primeminister6:Ramsay MacDonald
Stanley Baldwin
Predecessor6:William Jowitt
Successor6:Donald Somervell
Term Start7:28 March 1928
Term End7:4 June 1929
Primeminister7:Stanley Baldwin
Predecessor7:Douglas Hogg
Successor7:William Jowitt
Office8:Solicitor-General for England
Term Start8:3 September 1931
Term End8:26 January 1932
Primeminister8:Ramsay MacDonald
Predecessor8:Stafford Cripps
Successor8:Boyd Merriman
Term Start9:11 November 1924
Term End9:28 March 1928
Predecessor9:Henry Slesser
Successor9:Boyd Merriman
Term Start10:31 October 1922
Term End10:22 January 1924
Primeminister10:Bonar Law
Stanley Baldwin
Predecessor10:Leslie Scott
Office14:Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Term Start14:7 September 1939
Term End14:11 October 1947
Hereditary Peerage
Predecessor14:Peerage created
Successor14:The 2nd Viscount Caldecote
Office15:Member of Parliament
for Fareham
Term Start15:20 February 1931
Term End15:6 September 1939
Predecessor15:John Davidson
Successor15:Dymoke White
Office16:Member of Parliament
for Bristol Central
Term Start16:14 December 1918
Term End16:30 May 1929
Predecessor16:constituency established
Successor16:Joseph Alpass
Birth Date:1876 3, df=yes
Birth Place:Clifton, Bristol
United Kingdom
Death Place:Godalming, Surrey
United Kingdom
Birthname:Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip
Party:Conservative
Spouse:Lady Augusta Boyle
Alma Mater:King's College, Cambridge

Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote, (5 March 1876 – 11 October 1947) was a British politician who served in many legal posts, culminating in serving as Lord Chancellor from 1939 until 1940. Despite legal posts dominating his career for all but four years, he is most prominently remembered for serving as Minister for Coordination of Defence from 1936 until 1939.

Background and education

Inskip was the son of James Inskip, a solicitor, by his second wife Constance Sophia Louisa, daughter of John Hampden. The Right Reverend James Inskip was his elder half-brother and Sir John Hampden Inskip, Lord Mayor of Bristol, his younger brother. He attended Clifton College from 1886 to 1894[1] and King's College, Cambridge, from 1894 to 1897. He joined Clifton RFC in 1895–96. In 1899 he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple.

Political and legal career

Inskip became a King's Counsel in 1914. He served in the Intelligence Division from 1915 and from 1918 to 1919 worked at the Admiralty as head of the Naval Law branch.[2] From 1920 to 1922, he served as Chancellor of the Diocese of Truro. In 1918 he entered Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol Central. He was first appointed Solicitor General in 1922 and would hold this post for the next six years, with one short interruption for the Labour government of 1924. In 1922 he was knighted.

A staunch Protestant, he first came to high attention when in 1927 he joined with the Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks in attacking the proposed new version of the Book of Common Prayer. The law required Parliament to approve such revisions, normally regarded as a formality, but when the Prayer Book came before the House of Commons Inskip argued strongly against its adoption, for he felt it strayed far from the Protestant principles of the Church of England. The debate on the Prayer Book is regarded as one of the most eloquent ever seen in the Commons, and resulted in the rejection of the Prayer Book. A revised version was submitted in 1928 but rejected again. However, the Church Assembly then declared an emergency, and used this as a pretext to use the new Prayer Book for many decades afterwards.

In 1928 Inskip was promoted to Attorney General, which post he held until the following year's general election – in which he lost his Bristol seat. When Ramsay MacDonald formed his National Government in 1931, Inskip, who had been elected in a by-election for Fareham in February that year, returned to the role of Solicitor General but the following year a vacancy occurred and he once more resumed his work as Attorney General. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1932. In 1935 he prosecuted the 26th Baron de Clifford for manslaughter, which was the last ever criminal trial of a peer in the House of Lords.[3]

Despite an exclusively legal track record, on 13 March 1936 Inskip became the first Minister for Coordination of Defence.[4] His appointment to this particular office was highly controversial. Winston Churchill (who said he "had the advantage of being little known and knowing nothing about military subjects") had long campaigned for such an office and when its creation was announced, most expected Churchill to be appointed. When Inskip was named, one famous reaction was that "This is the most cynical appointment since Caligula made his horse a consul".[5] John Gunther, who described Inskip in 1940 as "the sixty-three-year-old man of mystery", reported the "cruel story" that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin wanted to appoint someone "'even less brilliant than himself'".[6] Collin Brooks castigated Inskip in his diary as "a second-rate Attorney General."[7] His appointment is now regarded as a sign of caution by Baldwin who did not wish to appoint someone like Churchill, because it would have been interpreted by foreign powers as a sign of the United Kingdom preparing for war. Baldwin anyway wished to avoid taking onboard such a controversial and radical minister as Churchill.

Inskip's tenure as Minister for Coordination of Defence remains controversial, with some arguing that he did much to push Britain's rearmament before the outbreak of the Second World War, but others arguing he was largely ineffectual, although his ministry "had no real powers and little staff".[8] In early 1939 he was replaced by the former First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield, and moved to become Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Caldecote, of Bristol in the County of Gloucester, and made Lord Chancellor, but in May 1940 he once more became Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs to make room for the marginalising of Sir John Simon in the new war ministry of Winston Churchill.[9] After leaving ministerial office Inskip served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 1940 until 1946. As of, he remains the last Lord Chief Justice to have held a ministerial office before his appointment.

Inskip was referred to in the book Guilty Men by Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard (writing under the pseudonym 'Cato'), published in 1940 as an attack on public figures for their failure to re-arm and their appeasement of Nazi Germany.[10]

Family

Lord Caldecote married Lady Augusta Helen Elizabeth, daughter of David Boyle, 7th Earl of Glasgow and widow of Charles Lindsay Orr-Ewing, in 1914. He died in October 1947, aged 71, and was succeeded by his son, Robert (Robin) Andrew in the viscountcy. Lady Caldecote died in May 1967, aged 90.

Arms

Escutcheon:Per chevron Azure and Argent in chief two crosses pate Or and in base an eagled displayed of the first.
Crest:Upon the battlements of a tower a grouse's leg erased Proper.
Supporters:On the dexter side a talbot and on the sinister side a pegasus Proper each charged on the shoulder with a garb Or.
Motto:Be Careful [11]

External links

Notes and References

  1. "Clifton College Register" Muirhead, J.A.O. ref no 3603: Bristol; J.W Arrowsmith for Old Cliftonian Society; April, 1948
  2. 34107. Inskip, Thomas Walker Hobart, first Viscount Caldecote (1876–1947). Keith. Robbins.
  3. Paley, Ruth. "The Dying Embers of an Outdated Privilege: The 1935 Trial of Lord de Clifford in the House of Lords". Parliamentary History 32.1 (2013): 169–186,
  4. Book: Spencer, Alex M . British Imperial Air Power: The Royal Air Forces and the Defense of Australia and New Zealand Between the World Wars . 2020 . Purdue University Press . Indiana . 978-1-55753-940-3 . 207 .
  5. This quote has been made on many occasions and the original source is unclear. The highly influential polemic Guilty Men (in the chapter titled "Caligula's Horse") attributes it to a "great statesman" (page 74), whom some have surmised was Churchill. However, Graham Stewart in Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party (London; Phoenix, 1999), page 487 attributes the origination of the quote to Churchill's non-politician friend Professor Frederick Lindemann.
  6. Book: Inside Europe . . Gunther, John . 1940 . 348.
  7. Bouverie, Tim (2019). Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War (1 ed.). New York: Tim Duggan Books. p. 94. . .
  8. Book: Spencer, Alex M . British Imperial Air Power: The Royal Air Forces and the Defense of Australia and New Zealand Between the World Wars . 2020 . Purdue University Press . Indiana . 978-1-55753-940-3 . 207 . .
  9. [Roy Jenkins]
  10. Book: Cato . Guilty Men . V. Gollancz . 1940 . London . 301463537.
  11. Book: Burke's Peerage. 1949.