1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Salisbury, James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of

SALISBURY, JAMES EDWARD HUBERT GASCOYNE-CECIL, 4th Marquess of (1861–), English politician, eldest son of the 3rd marquess (see 24.76), was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford, where he took a second-class in History in 1884. The next year he entered Parliament as member for Darwen. He was defeated in 1892, but he returned as member for Rochester in 1893 and remained in the House of Commons till he succeeded his father in 1903. He fought in the S. African War with the 4th battalion of the Bedfordshire regiment, and was mentioned in despatches. On his return in 1900 he became Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a post which on succeeding to the peerage he quitted for that of Privy Seal in the Cabinet of his cousin, Mr. Arthur Balfour; and he held, for some months in 1905, the office of President of the Board of Trade. Lord Salisbury never loomed large in the House of Commons, though he was for some years chairman of the Church Parliamentary Committee, and discharged competently his duties as Foreign Under-Secretary. But he gradually came to occupy a position of increased authority in the Upper House. He threw in his lot in 1911 with the "Die-hards," and spoke in favour of defeating the Parliament bill and daring the Government to create sufficient peers to carry it. During the early years of the war he was energetic in the discharge of his military duties as lieutenant-colonel of his yeomanry regiment. He did not join either Coalition Government, but was critical of both, taking an independent line. As the war drew to a dose he gradually came to assume the informal leadership of a Conservative and Unionist Opposition in his House, showing himself particularly sensitive to departures from the old policy of his party on Irish and ecclesiastical questions. He married in 1887 Lady Cicely Alice Gore, daughter of the 5th Earl of Arran, and had two sons and two daughters. He was created K.G. in 1917.