Arthur Hobhouse, 1st Baron Hobhouse

Arthur Hobhouse, 1st Baron Hobhouse KCSI CIE PC QC (10 November 1819 – 6 December 1904) was an English lawyer and judge.

Born at Hadspen, Somerset, Hobhouse was fourth and youngest son Henry Hobhouse, permanent under-secretary of state in the Home Office, by his wife Harriet, sixth daughter of John Turton of Sugnall Hall, Stafford. Edmund Hobhouse, Bishop of Nelson, and Reginald Hobhouse (1818–95), Archdeacon of Bodmin, were elder brothers. Passing at eleven from a private school to Eton, he remained there seven years (1830–7). In 1837 he went to Balliol College, Oxford, graduated B.A. in 1840 with a first class in classics, and proceeded M.A. in 1844. Entering at Lincoln's Inn on 22 April 1841, he was called to the bar on 6 May 1845, and soon acquired a large chancery and conveyancing practice.

In 1862 he became a Queen's Counsel and a bencher of his inn, serving the office of treasurer in 1880–1 and practised in the Rolls Court (the civil division of the Court of Appeal). A severe illness in 1866 led him to retire from practice and accept the appointment of charity commissioner. Hobhouse threw himself into the work with energy. He was not only active in administration but advocated a reform of the law governing charitable endowments. The Endowed Schools Act, 1869, was a first step in that direction, and under that act Lord Lyttelton, Hobhouse, and Canon H. G. Robinson were appointed commissioners with large powers of reorganising endowed schools. Much was accomplished in regard to endowed schools, but the efforts of Hobhouse and his fellow commissioners received a check in 1871, when the House of Lords rejected their scheme for remodelling the Emanuel Hospital, Westminster. There followed a controversy which was distasteful to Hobhouse, and with little regret he retired in 1872 in order to succeed Sir James Fitzjames Stephen as law member of the council of the Governor-General of India. Hobhouse had meanwhile served on the royal commission on the operation of the Land Transfer Act in 1869.

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