Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading
Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading (
10 October 1860 -
30 December 1935) was a British politician and jurist. A prosperous lawyer, Isaacs entered the Commons as a
Liberal in 1904, and went on to serve as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General in the governments of Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman and
Herbert Henry Asquith, becoming the first Attorney-General to sit in the Cabinet in
1912. In 1913, Isaacs was made
Lord Chief Justice, a position in which he served until 1921. He was raised to the peerage as
Lord Reading of Erleigh in
1914, and continued to rise to the peerage, being made a
Viscount in
1916 and an
Earl in
1917. In
1918, he was appointed Ambassador to the
United States, a position in which he served until
1919, while continuing at the same time as Lord Chief Justice. In
1921, he resigned the chief justiceship to become
Viceroy of India. Although Reading preferred a conciliatory policy, he ended up using force on several occasions, and imprisoned
Mahatma Gandhi in
1922. On his return in
1926, he was advanced to a
Marquess. In MacDonald's coalition government in
1931, he briefly served as
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but resigned after a few months due to ill-health.
Reading rose higher in the peerage than any other Jew in British history.
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|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
New Creation
|width="40%" align="center"|Marquess of Reading
|width="30%" align="center"|Followed by:
Gerald Rufus Isaacs
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