JAMES OF HEREFORD, HENRY JAMES, 1ST BARON (1828-1911 ) , English lawyer and statesman, son of P. T. James, surgeon, was born at Hereford on Oct. 3o, 1828, and educated at Cheltenham college. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1852 and joined the Oxford circuit. In 1867 he was made "postman" of the court of exchequer, and in 1869 became a Q.C. At the General Election of 1868 he obtained a seat in parliament for Taunton as a Liberal, by the unseating of Mr. Serjeant Cox on a scrutiny in March 1869, and he kept the seat till 1885, when he was returned for Bury. He attracted attention in parliament by his speeches in 1873 in the debates on the Judi cature Act, and in September he was made solicitor-general, and in November attorney-general, and knighted ; and when Gladstone returned to power in 5880 he resumed his office. He was responsi ble for carrying the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883. On Glad stone's conversion to Home Rule, Sir Henry James parted from him and became one of the most influential of the Liberal Union ists; Gladstone had offered him the lord chancellorship in 1886, but he declined it ; and the knowledge of the sacrifice he had made in refusing to follow his old chief in his new departure lent great weight to his advocacy of the Unionist cause in the country. He was one of the leading counsel for The Times before
the Parnell Commission, and from 1892 to 1895 was attorney general to the prince of Wales.
From 1895 to 1902 James was a member of the Unionist min istry as chancellor for the duchy of Lancaster, and in 1895 he was made a peer as Baron James of Hereford. The next year he joined the judicial committee of the Privy Council, and sat there and as a lord of appeal in the House of Lords. He delivered a number of important decisions as chairman of the Coal Concilia tion Board from 1898 to 1909. In his later years the new policy of the Unionist Government drove him into opposition again; he opposed the Tariff Reform policy, and he opposed the rejection of the Budget by the House of Lords. He died on Aug. 18, 1911 at Kingswood Warren near Epsom.