1493 Lewis Harcourt

Constituency  : Rossendale  1904-17

Lewis  retained  Rossendale  for  the  Liberals  after  the  resignation  of  Sir  William  Mather. I  didn't  have  to  look  up  the  dates  for  his  tenure  as  Lewis  is  the  first  of  a  cluster  of  MPs  that  featured  in  my  dissertation  at  University.

Lewis  was  the  only  son  of  William  Harcourt  to  survive  infancy.  was  in  delicate  health  as  a  boy  and  father  and  son  had  a  very  close  relationship, Lewis's  mother  having  died  soon  after  his  birth. He  was  educated  at  Eton. The  family  estates  enabled  him  to  be  a  full  time  politician. He served  as  his  father's  private  secretary  and  became  known  as  a  great  intriguer  and  wirepuller  on  his  father's  behalf.  He  helped  keep  his  father  in  the  Liberal  Party  in  1886. He  acquired  the  unflattering  nickname  of  "Loulou".  He  tried  to  secure  his  father's  accession  to  the  leadership  in  1894  earning  only  the  lifelong  enmity  of  Rosebery. He  was  a  loyal  supporter  of  Campbell-Bannerman  after  his  father  resigned  the  Commons  leadership .His  father's  failing  health   in  1904  prompted  him  to  enter  Parliament  himself.

Campbell-Bannerman  made  him  First  Commissioner  of  Works  and  admitted  him  to  the  Cabinet  in  1907. Lewis  made  notes  during  Cabinet  meetings  in  defiance  of  convention  and  Asquith's  express  instructions.   He  and  Asquith  were  near  neighbours  in  Oxfordshire  and  held  similar  opinions most  notably  on  female  suffrage. .Despite  claiming  Radical  credentials  he  disliked  and  obstructed  many  of  the  provisions  in  the  People's  Budget.

 In  1910  he  became  Colonial  Secretary. He  upset  George  V  with  his  strident  tone  during  the  Home  Rule  crisis.  A  new  port  in  Nigeria  was  named  after  him  in  1912.

That  year, Charles  Hobhouse  wrote  of  him  "Harcourt  has  many  attractive  qualities : charming  manners  when  he  likes, a  temper  under  good  control , a  hard  worker  but  no  one  trusts  him  and  everyone  thinks  that  language  is  only  employed  by  him  to  conceal  his  thought."  Three  years  later  he  added  "subtle, secretive  and  adroit  and  not  very  reliable  or  au  fond  courageous, does  not  interfere  often  in  discussion  but  is  fond  of  conversing  with  the  P.M.  in  undertones".

Lewis  initially  supported  British  neutrality  in  World  War  One  but  was  won  round  to  Asquith's position.

When  Asquith  formed  his  coalition  with  the  Tories,  Lewis  went  back  to  being  First  Commissioner  Of  Works.  He  told  Asquith  he  would  not  accept  the  Home  Office  when  Simon  resigned  over  conscription.

Lewis  resigned  along  with  Asquith  in  1916 not  least  because  his  health  was  suffering  after  a  decade  in  office. The  following  year  was  elevated  to  the  peerage  as  Viscount  Harcourt. Like  Asquith  he  now  accepted  the inevitability  of  female  suffrage.

Lewis  was  a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum  and  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. He  enjoyed  photography  and  gardening.

In  a  book  in  1995  the  gay  former  Tory  MP  and  political  columnist  Matthew  Parris  claimed  that  Lewis  was  known  to  be  a  paedophile  but  protected  by  society  up  until  1921  when  an  incident  became  known  to  the  police . He  claims  that  Lewis's  death  in  1922 , aged  59,   by  accidental  overdose,  was  actually  a  suicide  that  was  hushed  up  by  his  friends. There  was  no  hint  of  any  of  this  in  the  Harcourt  papers  deposited  in  the  Bodleian  Library  when  I  examined  them  in  1906.

In  2014  some  of  his  diary  extracts  were  included  in  a  book  about  the  causes  of   Britain's  involvement  in  the  First  World  War.