READING OP EARLEY, Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st earl, British jurist : b. London, 10 Oct. 1860. The son of a fruit merchant, he was educated at University College School, London, and in Brussels and Hanover. For a time he was a seaman on a coal ship running to South America, and acted as his father's agent in Magdeburg. He took up the study of law, was called to the bar and in 1898 became queen's counsel. In 1904 he was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal member for Reading. In 1910 he was knighted and made successively solicitor-general and attorney-general. His part in the libel suit against Edward Mylius, who had published an old fiction to the effect that King George V had contracted an early secret marriage, won Isaacs increased royal favor, for he had already been a personal friend of the previous king. As a lawyer, Sir Rufus held a high reputation as a fair attorney, with a remarkable mastery of financial and technical details acquired as a member of the Stock Ex change. His brilliant powers of cross-examina tion and forensic erudition marked him for the highest honor. He was invited to a seat in the Cabinet in 1912, the first time that an at torney-general received that distinction. To
gether with the then Chancellor Lloyd George, he was accused of speculation in Marconi stock, admitted the charge and seemed to lose nothing in political prestige with his own party He was one of the staunchest defenders of the Liberal financial policy in the Home Rule Bill of 1913. Late in that year the lord chief jus tice, Lord Alverstone, retired on account of ill-health and Sir Rufus Isaacs succeeded him.
He was, the first Jew to hold that important position. In 1914 he was elevated to the peer age, and in 1915 headed the Anglo-French com mission to the United States to arrange for the American loan of $500,000,000. On 7 Jan. 1918, the Earl of Reading was appointed British High Commissioner in the United States in the character of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary on Special Mission,)) with full authority over the members of all British mis sions sent to the United States in connection with the active prosecution of the war. Con sult Gardiner, A. G. 'Prophets, Priests and Kings> (London 19e6).