convictions.
Arthur Henry Hardinge (Sir Arthur after 1904) and his cousin, Charles Hardinge
(Baron Hardinge of Penshurst after 1910), were both aided in their careers by Lord
Salisbury. The former, a Fellow of All Souls in 1881 and an assistant secretary to Lord
Salisbury four years later, rose to be Minister to Persia, Belgium, and Portugal (1900-
1913) and Ambassador to Spain (1913-1919). The latter worked up in the diplomatic
service to be First Secretary at the Embassy in St. Petersburg (1898-1903), then was
Assistant Under Secretary and Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1903-
1904, 1906-1910, 1916-1920), Ambassador at St. Petersburg (1904-1906), Viceroy of
India (1910-1916), and Ambassador at Paris (1920-1922). Charles Hardinge, although
almost unknown to many people, is one of the most significant figures in the formation of
British foreign policy in the twentieth century. He was the close personal friend and most
important adviser on foreign policy of King Edward VII and accompanied the King on all
his foreign diplomatic tours. His post as Under Secretary was kept available for him
during these trips and in later life during his service as Ambassador and Viceroy. He
presents the only case in British history where an ax-Ambassador and ax-Viceroy was to
be found in the position of Under Secretary. He was probably the most important single
person in the formation of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 and was very influential in the
formation of the understanding with Russia in 1907. His son, Captain Alexander
Hardinge, married Milner's stepdaughter, Helen Mary Cecil, in 1921 and succeeded his
father as Baron Hardinge of Penshurst in 1944. He was equerry and assistant private
secretary to King George V (1920-1936) and private secretary and extra equerry to both
Edward VIII and George VI (1936-1943). He had a son, George Edward Hardinge (born
1921), who married Janet Christian Goschen, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel F. C. C.
Balfour, granddaughter of the second Viscount Goschen and of Lady Goschen, the
former Lady Evelyn Gathorne-Hardy (fifth daughter of the first Earl of Cranbrook). Thus
a grandchild of Milner was united with a great-grandchild of his old benefactor, Lord
Goschen.(4)
Among the persons recruited from All Souls by Lord Salisbury were two future
prelates of the Anglican Church. These were Cosmo Gordon Lang, Fellow for forty
years, and Herbert Hensley Henson, Fellow for twenty-four years. Lang was Bishop of
Stepney (1901-1908), Archbishop of York (1908-1928), and Archbishop of Canterbury
(1928-1942). Henson was Canon of Westminister Abbey (1900-1912), Dean of Durham
(1912-1918), and Bishop of Hereford and of Durham (1918-1939).
The Right Reverend Arthur Cayley Headlam was a Fellow of All Souls for about forty
years and, in addition, was editor of the Church Quarterly Review, Regius Professor of
Divinity, and Bishop of Gloucester. He is chiefly of interest to us because his younger
brother, James W. Headlam-Morley (1863-1929), was a member of the Milner Group.
James (Sir James in 1929) was put by the Group into the Department of Information
(under John Buchan, 1917-1918), and the Foreign Office (under Milner and Curzon,
1918-1928), went to the Peace Conference in 1919, edited the first published volume of
British Documents on the Origin of the War (1926), and was a mainstay of the Royal
Institute of International Affairs, where his portrait still hangs.
His daughter, Agnes, was made Montague Burton Professor of International Relations
at Oxford in 1948. This was a position strongly influenced by the Milner Group.
Francis W. Pember was used by Lord Salisbury from time to time as assistant legal
adviser to the Foreign Office. He was Warden of All Souls in succession to Anson (1914-
1932).
Walter Phillimore (Lord Phillimore after 1918) was admitted to All Souls with Anson
in 1867. He was a lifelong friend and associate of the second Viscount Halifax (1839-
1934). The latter devoted his life to the cause of church union and was for fifty-two years
(1868-1919, 1934) president of the English Church Union. In this post he was succeeded
in 1919 by Lord Phillimore, who had been serving as vice-president for many years and
who was an intimate friend of the Halifax family. It was undoubtedly through Phillimore
that the present Earl of Halifax, then simple Edward Wood, was elected to All Souls in
1903 and became an important member of the Milner Group. Phillimore was a specialist
in ecclesiastical law, and it created a shock when Lord Salisbury made him a judge of the
Queen's Bench in 1897, along with Edward Ridley, who had entered All Souls as a
Fellow the year before Phillimore. The echoes of this shock can still be discerned in Lord
Sankey's brief sketch of Phillimore in the Dictionary of National Biography. Phillimore
became a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1913 and in 1918 drew up one of the two British
drafts for the Covenant of the League of Nations. The other draft, known as the Cecil
Draft, was attributed to Lord Robert Cecil but was largely the work of Alfred Zimmern, a
member of the Milner Group.
Rowland Edmund Prothero (Lord Ernle after 1919) and his brother, George W.
Prothero (Sir George after 1920), are two of the most important links between the Cecil
Bloc and the Milner Group. They grew up on the Isle of Wight in close contact with
Queen Victoria, who was a family friend. Through the connection, the elder Prothero was
asked to tutor the Duke of Bedford in 1878, a position which led to his appointment in
1899 as agent-in-chief of the Duke. In the interval he was a Fellow of All Souls for
sixteen years and engaged in literary work, writing unsigned articles for the Edinburgh
Review, the Church Quarterly Review and The Quarterly Review. Of the last, possibly through the influence of Lord Salisbury, he became editor for five years (1894-1899),
being succeeded in the position by his brother for twenty-three years (1899-1922).
As agent of the extensive agricultural holdings of the Duke of Bedford, Prothero
became familiar with agricultural problems and began to w rite on the subject. He ran for
Parliament from Bedfordshire as a Unionist, on a platform advocating tariff reform, in
1907 and again in 1910, but in spite of his influential friends, he was not successful. He
wrote of these efforts: "I was a stranger to the political world, without friends in the
House of Commons. The only men prominent in public life whom I knew with any
degree of real intimacy were Curzon and Milner." (5) In 1914, at Anson's death, he was
elected to succeed him as one of Oxford's representatives in Parliament. Almost
immediately he was named a member of Milner's Committee on Home Production of
Food (1915), and the following year was on Lord Selborne's committee concerned with
the same problem. At this point in his autobiography, Prothero wrote: "Milner and I were
old friends. We had been undergraduates together at Balliol College.... The outside world
thought him cold and reserved.... But between Milner and myself there was no barrier,
mainly, I think, because we were both extremely shy men." The interim report of the
Selborne Committee repeated the recommendations of the Milner Committee in
December 1916. At the same time came the Cabinet crisis, and Prothero was named
President of the Board of Agriculture with a seat in the new Cabinet. Several persons
close to the Milner Group were put into the department, among them Sir Sothern