Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/160

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of parliament, of troops belonging to the Indian native army from India to Malta is, with the reply of Lord Cairns, the locus classicus on that important topic. Notwithstanding his high-churchmanship, he supported Archbishop Tait's Public Worship Regulation Bill of 1874 and the Burials Bill of 1880. But the first measure he only regarded as a pis-aller.

On the formation of Mr. Gladstone's second administration Selborne returned to the woolsack, 28 April 1880, and on 29 Dec. 1882, on the occasion of the opening of the new law courts in the Strand, was created Viscount Wolmer of Blackmoor in the county of Southampton, and Earl of Selborne. Selborne fully concurred in Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy so far as it was merely agrarian, and he retained office until the fall of the administration in June 1885. He was prevented from entering Mr. Gladstone's third cabinet (formed in February 1886) by inability to follow his former chief in his sudden espousal of the cause of home rule. The grounds of his dissent Selborne made public in a letter to the ‘Times’ of 23 April 1886. As a liberal-unionist he played a potent if not very prominent part in the long struggle which followed, and, in September 1893, spoke with effect in the House of Lords against the Home Rule Bill presented by Mr. Gladstone's government. Meanwhile he succeeded in effecting some minor but useful measures of law reform, and took part in the agitation against the proposal of Lord Rosebery's ministry to disestablish and disendow the Welsh church (1893–4). His interest in public affairs remained unabated until his death, which took place at his residence, Blackmoor, Petersfield, on 4 May 1895. He was then in his eighty-third year. His remains were interred on 8 May in the church of St. Matthew, Blackmoor, which he had himself built.

At all periods of his life a devout and loyal son of the church of England, Selborne admirably illustrated her history and literature both in his hymnal, entitled ‘The Book of Praise’ (Golden Treasury series), London, 1863, and in his ‘Notes of some Passages in the Liturgical History of the English Church’ (London, 1878, 8vo). He also contributed to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ 9th edit. (1881), a scholarly article on hymns, of which a separate reprint appeared in 1892 under the title ‘Hymns: their History and Development in the Greek and Latin Churches, Germany, and Great Britain,’ London, 8vo. The depth of his religious convictions is apparent in his inaugural address as rector of the university of St. Andrews, 21 Nov. 1878 (published in pamphlet form), and his address as president of the Wordsworth Society, 7 July 1886 (Trans. of Wordsworth Society, No. viii.). In ‘A Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment,’ London, 1886, 8vo, 4th edit. 1888, and ‘Ancient Facts and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes,’ London, 1888, 8vo, he reproduced and reinforced with much learning and lucidity the argument of Selden in favour of the unbroken continuity of the reformed church of England with the church founded by St. Augustine.

Selborne was for some years chairman of the house of laymen of the province of Canterbury. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 7 June 1860, and was an hon. LL.D. of Cambridge University. From his early years he was a member of the Mercers' Company, as his father and grandfather had been before him, and he was elected master in 1876. During his mastership he visited the company's estates in Ireland, and also attended carefully to home affairs.

Selborne's portrait in oils, as an old man, by G. F. Watts, R.A., hangs in the drawing-room at Lincoln's Inn, where also an engraving by W. Holl, from a sketch in profile by Mr. Richmond, R.A., shows him in early manhood. A third portrait, by Mr. Ouless, is in Magdalen College hall, Oxford; a fourth, a good likeness by Miss Busk, is in Trinity College hall, Oxford; and a fifth, by Mr. Wells, is in the Mercers' Hall, London.

Selborne married, on 2 Feb. 1848, Lady Laura Waldegrave (d. 1885), second daughter of William, eighth earl Waldegrave, by whom he had issue one son, William Waldegrave, viscount Wolmer, his successor in title and estate, and four daughters.

Selborne left autobiographical memorials, which are to be published.

[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Ward's W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement, and W. G. Ward and the Catholic Revival; Davidson and Benham's Life of A. C. Tait; Newman's Letters, ed. Anne Mozley, ii. 321; Charles Wordsworth's Annals of my Early Life, 1806–48, and Annals of my Life, 1847–56; Greville Memoirs, pt. ii. vol. iii. p. 400; Times, 6 May 1895; Solicitors' Journal, 11 May 1895; private information.]

J. M. R.

PALMER, SAMUEL (d. 1724), pamphleteer, was educated for the dissenting ministry under John Ker or Kerr, M.D., noted as a nonconformist teacher of philosophy at Bethnal Green (afterwards at Highgate). On the death of Henry Read Palmer succeeded him (about 1698) as minis-