II.

Early Career

Asquith was born in Morley, Yorkshire, on September 12, 1852. He was educated at the City of London School and after graduating from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1874 and entering Lincoln’s Inn, he practised law, having been called to the bar in 1876. He was elected to Parliament as Liberal member for East Fife in 1886. He attained national prominence as junior defence counsel for the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, when the latter was under investigation by Parliament in 1888, and in 1892 he became home secretary under Prime Minister William Gladstone. Out of office from 1895 to 1905, tensions in the Liberal Party surfaced over the conduct of the South African War: Asquith, unlike many of his colleagues, supported the imperial policy of the government. However, he joined the new Liberal government as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in 1908 he succeeded Henry Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister.