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Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. Until 5 January 1988, he had been the longest continuously serving Prime Minister in the 20th century.〔5 January 1988 was the day on which his record was surpassed by Margaret Thatcher. Winston Churchill served longer, however, in two non-consecutive terms in office〕 As Prime Minister, he led his Liberal party to a series of domestic reforms, including social insurance and the reduction of the power of the House of Lords. He led the nation into the First World War, but a series of military and political crises led to his replacement in late 1916 by David Lloyd George. His falling out with Lloyd George played a major part in the downfall of the Liberal Party. Before his term as Prime Minister he served as Home Secretary (1892–95) and as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1905–08). He was known as H. H. Asquith until his elevation to the peerage (1925), when he became Earl of Oxford and Asquith. Asquith's achievements in peacetime have been overshadowed by his weaknesses in wartime. Many historians portray a vacillating Prime Minister, unable to present the necessary image of action and dynamism to the public.〔Hazlehurst (1970); Koss (1976); Taylor (1965)〕 Others stress his continued high administrative ability, and argue that many of the major reforms popularly associated with Lloyd George as "the man who won the war" were actually implemented by Asquith.〔Cassar (1994)〕 The dominant historical verdict is that there were two Asquiths: the urbane and conciliatory Asquith, who was a successful peacetime leader, and the hesitant and increasingly exhausted Asquith, who practised the politics of muddle and delay during the Great War.〔Woodward notes that Cassar agrees with most of Asquith's contemporaries that Asquith was an exhausted leader who had lost his grip during the last half of 1916. David R. Woodward, review of Cassar, ''Albion'' Vol. 27, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), p. 529〕 According to Roy Jenkins, writing in 1993, Asquith presided over, during his time as Prime Minister, “one of the only two major reforming left-of-centre governments of the past hundred years.”〔https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VsICNA8gGdIC&pg=PT103&dq=asquith+left-of-centre+cabinet&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDMQ6AEwA2oVChMI7ZDN9J2uxwIVD1nbCh1l6w7q#v=onepage&q=asquith%20left-of-centre%20cabinet&f=false〕 ==Childhood, education and legal career== Asquith was born at Croft House in Morley, West Riding of Yorkshire, to Joseph Dixon Asquith (10 February 1825 – 16 June 1860) and his wife Emily Willans (4 May 1828 – 12 December 1888).〔Edward J. Davies, "The Ancestry of Herbert Henry Asquith", ''Genealogists' Magazine'', 30(2010–12):471–79.〕 The Asquiths were a middle-class family and members of the Congregational church. Joseph was a wool merchant and came to own his own woollen mill. Herbert was seven years old when his father died. Emily and her children moved to the house of her father William Willans, a wool-stapler of Huddersfield. Herbert received schooling there and was later sent to a Moravian Church boarding school at Fulneck, near Leeds. In 1863, Herbert was sent to live with an uncle in London, where he entered the City of London School. He was educated there until 1870 and mentored by its headmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott.〔〔 In 1870, Asquith won a classical scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1874, Asquith was awarded the Craven scholarship. Despite the unpopularity of the Liberals during the dying days of Gladstone's First Government, he became president of the Oxford Union in the Trinity (summer) term of his fourth year. He graduated that year and soon was elected a fellow at Balliol. Meanwhile, he entered Lincoln's Inn as a pupil barrister and for a year served a pupillage under Charles Bowen.〔〔 He was called to the bar in 1876 and, although briefs were not initially forthcoming, became prosperous in the early 1880s from practising at the Chancery Bar. Among other cases he appeared for the defence in the famous case of ''Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co'' when the case was heard at first instance in the Queen's Bench Division.〔''Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company'' () 2 Q.B. 484〕 His services were not employed when the case was heard on appeal in the Court of Appeal. Asquith took silk (was appointed QC) in 1890. It was at Lincoln's Inn that in 1882 Asquith met Richard Haldane, whom he would appoint as Lord Chancellor in 1912.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「H. H. Asquith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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