Thomas Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote
Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote, Kt, CBE, PC, KC (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.[1] He attended Clifton College from 1886 to 1894[2] and King's College, Cambridge, from 1894 to 1897.[3] He joined Clifton RFC in 1895–96. In 1899 he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple.[1]
Political and legal career
Inskip became a King's Counsel in 1914.[4] He served in the Intelligence Division from 1915 and from 1918 to 1919 worked at the Admiralty as head of the Naval Law branch.[5] From 1920–22, he served as Chancellor of the Diocese of Truro.[5] In 1918 he entered Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol Central.[1][6] 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.[1] In 1922 he was knighted.[7]
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.[1] When Ramsay MacDonald formed his National Government in 1931, Inskip, who had been elected in a by-election for Fareham in February that year,[1][8] returned to the role of Solicitor General but the following year a vacancy occurred and he once more resumed his work as Attorney General.[1] He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1932.[9] 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.
Despite an exclusively legal track record, in 1936 Inskip became the first Minister for Coordination of Defence.[1] His appointment to this particular office was highly controversial. Winston Churchill 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".[10] 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'".[11] 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. 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.[1] At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Caldecote, of Bristol in the County of Gloucester,[12] and made Lord Chancellor, but in May 1940 he once more became Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs[1] to make room for the marginalising of Sir John Simon in the new government of Churchill.[13] After leaving ministerial office Inskip served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1940 until 1946.[1] As of 16 August 2020, he remains the last Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales 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.[14]
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.[1]
Arms
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References
- thepeerage.com Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote
- "Clifton College Register" Muirhead, J.A.O. ref no 3603: Bristol; J.W Arrowsmith for Old Cliftonian Society; April, 1948
- "Inskip, Thomas Walker Hobart (INSP894TW)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- "No. 28935". The London Gazette. 13 October 1914. p. 8125.
- Robbins, Keith. "Inskip, Thomas Walker Hobart, first Viscount Caldecote (1876–1947)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34107. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- leighrayment.com House of Commons: Bristol to Buteshire and Caithness
- "No. 32781". The London Gazette. 29 December 1922. p. 9162.
- leighrayment.com House of Commons: Fairfield to Fylde South
- "No. 33798". The London Gazette. 12 February 1932. p. 941.
- 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) (ISBN 0-7538-1060-3), page 487 attributes the origination of the quote to Churchill's non-politician friend Professor Frederick Lindemann.
- Gunther, John (1940). Inside Europe. Harper & Brothers. p. 348.
- "No. 34674". The London Gazette (Supplement). 8 September 1939. p. 6126.
- Roy Jenkins, Baldwin (London: Collins, 1987), p. 178.
- Cato (1940). Guilty Men. London: V. Gollancz. OCLC 301463537.
- Burke's Peerage. 1949.
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Caldecote
- Newspaper clippings about Thomas Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| New constituency | Member of Parliament for Bristol Central 1918–1929 |
Succeeded by Joseph Herbert Alpass |
| Preceded by Sir John Humphrey Davidson |
Member of Parliament for Fareham 1931–1939 |
Succeeded by Sir Rudolph Dymoke White |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by Sir Leslie Scott |
Solicitor General 1922–1924 |
Succeeded by Sir Henry Slesser |
| Preceded by Sir Henry Slesser |
Solicitor General 1924–1928 |
Succeeded by Sir Frank Merriman |
| Preceded by Douglas Hogg |
Attorney General 1928–1929 |
Succeeded by William Jowitt |
| Preceded by Sir Stafford Cripps |
Solicitor General 1931 |
Succeeded by Sir Frank Merriman |
| Preceded by William Jowitt |
Attorney General 1932–1936 |
Succeeded by Sir Donald Somervell |
| Preceded by The Viscount Hewart |
Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales 1940–1946 |
Succeeded by The Lord Goddard |
| Political offices | ||
| New office | Minister for Coordination of Defence 1936–1939 |
Succeeded by Ernle Chatfield |
| Preceded by Malcolm MacDonald |
Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs 1939 |
Succeeded by Anthony Eden |
| Preceded by The Lord Maugham |
Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain 1939–1940 |
Succeeded by The Viscount Simon |
| Preceded by Anthony Eden |
Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs 1940 |
Succeeded by Viscount Cranborne |
| Preceded by The Earl Stanhope |
Leader of the House of Lords 1940 |
Succeeded by The Viscount Halifax |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by The Earl Stanhope |
Leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords 1940 |
Succeeded by The Viscount Halifax |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Viscount Caldecote 1939–1947 |
Succeeded by Robert Andrew Inskip |
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