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Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith ( September 12, 1852 - February 15, 1928Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 See also 1928 in aviation 1928 in film 1928 in literature 1928 in mu) served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United KingdomIn the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister is the head of government, exercising many of the executive functions nominally vested in the Sovereign, who is head of state. According to custom, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (which he or she heads) are re from 1908 to 1916.

Born in Morley, Yorkshire and educated at the City of London School, he won a scholarship to Balliol College, OxfordBalliol College founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Traditionally, the undergraduates are amongst the most politically active in the university, and the college's alumni include several fo. After graduation he became a barrister and was called to the bar in 1876. He became prosperous in the early 1880s from practising law. He married Helen Kelsall Melland, daughter of a Manchester doctor, in 1877 and they had four sons and one daughter before she died from typhoid in 1891. In 1894 he remarried, his second wife being Margot Tennant, the daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Bt (i.e. a baronet newly created). He was known as Herbert Asquith in his youth, but from the time of his second marriage, at his wife's urging, he used the more prestigious-sounding Henry Asquith. Several children were born to him by his second wife, but only a son and daughter survived past infancy.

Elected to Parliament in 1886 as the Liberal representative for East Fife, he achieved his first significant post in 1892 when he became Home Secretary under GladstoneWilliam Ewart Gladstone ( December 29 1809 May 19 1898) was a British liberal politician and Prime Minister (1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886 and 1892-1894). He was a notable political reformer, known for his populist speeches, and was for many years the main p. The Liberals went out of power for ten years from 1895, and he turned down an offer to lead the party in 1898.

The Liberal Party won a landslide victory in the 1905 general election, and Asquith became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He demonstrated his staunch support of free trade in this post. Campbell-Bannerman resigned due to illness in April 1908 and Asquith succeeded him as Prime Minister.

The Asquith government began an extensive social welfare programme, introducing government pensions in 1908. However it also became involved in an expensive naval arms race with Germany. The financing of this expenditure required funding through an increase in taxation, which together with other measures provoked a revolt in the Conservative-controlled House of Lords over David Lloyd George's 1909 budget. Such a clash had not occurred for over a hundred years.

Asquith narrowly avoided a constitutional crisis, made the powers of the Lords the issue of the elections of January and December 1910, and curbed those powers by the Parliament Act of 1911. The price of Irish support in this effort was Irish Home Rule, which Asquith delivered in legislation that was ultimately suspended owing to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Asquith's efforts over home rule for Ireland nearly provoked a civil war in Ireland, only averted by the outbreak of a European war.

Asquith headed the Liberal government into the war. However following a cabinet split in May 1915, caused by the Shell Crisis, he became head of a new coalition government, bringing senior figures from the opposition into the cabinet. But his performance over the conduct of the war dissatisified certain Liberals and the Conservative Party. Opponents partially blamed a series of political and military disasters (including the failed offensives at the Somme and Gallipoli (1915- 1916)) and the Easter Rising in Ireland (April 1916) on Asquith. Acting to displace the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George managed to split the Liberals and on December 5, 1916 Asquith resigned. Lloyd George became head of the coalition two days later.

Asquith remained leader of the Liberal Party after 1916 and even after losing his seat in the 1918 elections. He returned to the House of Commons in 1923. Asquith played a major role in putting the minority Labour government of 1924 into office, elevating Ramsay MacDonald to the Prime Ministership.

Raised to the peerage as Viscount Asquith, of Morley in the West Riding of the County of York, and Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925, Asquith retired to the House of Lords. The Liberals did not replace him as head of the party until 1926, when Lloyd George succeeded him, healing the split in the Liberal Party.

Asquith died in 1928. His second wife Margot Tennant outlived him, dying in 1945. His only daughter by his first wife, Violet (later Violet Bonham-Carter ), became a well-regarded writer and a Life Peeress in her own right. His eldest son Raymond Asquith was killed at the Somme in 1916, and thus his peerage passed to the latter's only son Julian, now 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith (b. 1916) a few months before his father's death. Another son Cyril became a Law Lord, and two other sons married well, one being the poet Herbert Asquith (who is often confused with his father). His two children by Margot were Elizabeth (later Princess Antoine Bibesco), a writer, and Anthony Asquith, a well-known film-maker whose productions include The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy.

Among his descendants are the actress Helena Bonham-Carter and the wife of former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond.