RARE "1st Viscount Alverstone" Richard Webster Hand Written Letter For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "1st Viscount Alverstone" Richard Webster Hand Written Letter Dated 1894.

ES-9069

Richard Everard Webster, 1st Viscount Alverstone, GCMG,

PC, FRS (22 December 1842 – 15 December 1915)

was a British barrister, politician and judge who served in many high political

and judicial offices. Webster was the second son of Thomas Webster QC. He was

educated at King's College School and Charterhouse, and Trinity College, Cambridge.He was well known as an athlete in his earlier years, having

represented his university in the first Inter-Varsity steeplechase and as a runner. As such, the Cambridge

University Alverstone Club is named in his honour, and makes a pilgrimage to Alverstone, Isle of Wight, every 4

years. The following prayer is used on appropriate occasions: Webster was called to the

bar in 1868, and became QC

only ten years afterwards. His practice was chiefly in commercial, railway and

patent cases until (June 1885) he was appointed Attorney-General in the Conservative Government in the exceptional

circumstances of never having been Solicitor-general, and not

at the time occupying a seat in parliament. He was elected for Launceston in the

following month, and in November exchanged this seat for the Isle of Wight, which he

continued to represent until his elevation to the House of

Lords. Except under the brief Gladstone administration of 1886, and of 1892–1895, Sir Richard Webster was Attorney-General from 1885 to

1900. In 1890 he was leading counsel for The Times

in the Parnell inquiry; in 1893 he represented

Great Britain in the Bering Sea arbitration; in 1898 he discharged

the same function in the matter of the boundary between British

Guiana and Venezuela. In the House of Commons, and outside it, his

political career was prominently associated with church

work; and his speeches were distinguished for gravity and earnestness. In July

1885, he was made a Knight Bachelor. In December 1893, he was

appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George

as a Knight Grand Cross. In January 1900 he was created a Baronet,

but in May the same year succeeded Sir Nathaniel Lindley as Master of the Rolls, being raised to the peerage

as Baron Alverstone, of Alverstone in the County of Southampton and sworn of the Privy Council, and in

October of the same year he was elevated to the office of Lord Chief Justice upon

the death of Lord Russell of Killowen.

He presided over some notable trials of the era including Hawley Harvey Crippen. Although popular,

he was not considered an outstanding judge; one colleague wrote after his death

that "the reports will be searched in vain for judgments of his that are

valuable". He received the honorary

degree Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Edinburgh in April 1902, and

was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

later the same year In late 1902 he was in South Africa as part of a commission

looking into the use of martial law sentences during the Second Boer

War.In 1903 during the Alaska boundary dispute he was one of the

members of the Boundary Commission. Against the wishes of the Canadians it was

his swing vote

that settled the matter, roughly splitting the disputed territory. As a result,

he became extremely unpopular in Canada. He retired in 1913, and was created Viscount

Alverstone, of Alverstone, Isle of Wight in the County of Southampton