Background
Webster was bornon the 22nd of December 1842 in Holborn. He was the second son of Thomas Webster QC.
Webster was bornon the 22nd of December 1842 in Holborn. He was the second son of Thomas Webster QC.
He was educated at King's College School and Charterhouse, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
He was well known as an athlete in his earlier years, having represented his university in the first Inter-Varsity steeplechase and as a runner.
He received the honorary degree Doctor of Laws (LL. D. ) from the University of Edinburgh in April 1902.
Webster was called to the bar in 1868, and became QC only ten years afterwards. His practice was chiefly in commercial, railway and patent cases until (June 1885) he was appointed Attorney-General in the Conservative Government in the exceptional circumstances of never having been Solicitor-general, and not at the time occupying a seat in parliament. He was elected for Launceston in the following month, and in November exchanged this seat for the Isle of Wight, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the House of Lords. Except under the brief Gladstone administration of 1886, and the Gladstone-Rosebery cabinet of 1892–1895, Sir Richard Webster was Attorney-General from 1885 to 1900.
In 1890 he was leading counsel for The Times in the Parnell inquiry; in 1893 he represented Great Britain in the Bering Sea arbitration; in 1898 he discharged the same function in the matter of the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela.
In 1903 during the Alaska boundary dispute he was one of the members of the Boundary Commission. Against the wishes of the Canadians it was his swing vote that settled the matter, roughly splitting the disputed territory. As a result, he became extremely unpopular in Canada.
In July 1885, he was made a Knight Bachelor.
In January 1900 he was created a Baronet, but in May the same year succeeded Sir Nathaniel Lindley as Master of the Rolls, being raised to the peerage as Baron Alverstone, of Alverstone in the County of Southampton and sworn of the Privy Council, and in October of the same year he was elevated to the office of Lord Chief Justice upon the death of Lord Russell of Killowen. He presided over some notable trials of the era including Hawley Harvey Crippen. Although popular, he was not considered an outstanding judge.
He retired in 1913, and was created Viscount Alverstone, of Alverstone, Isle of Wight in the County of Southampton.
He commissioned the architect Edward Blakeway I'Anson to build Winterfold House near Cranleigh in the Surrey Hills in 1886, in a classic late Victorian style, and laid out grounds with flowering trees ad shrubs.
Lord Alverstone died at Cranleigh, Surrey, in December 1915, aged 72.
Richard Everard Webster was an outstanding politician and judge who served in many high political and judicial offices. The Cambridge Alverstone Club was named in his honour and the Lord's Prayer was dedicated to him.
In December 1893, he was appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George as a Knight Grand Cross.
He received the honorary degree Doctor of Laws (LL. D. ) from the University of Edinburgh in April 1902.
In the House of Commons, and outside it, his political career was prominently associated with church work; and his speeches were distinguished for gravity and earnestness.
He was President of Surrey County Cricket Club from 1895 until his death, and of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1903.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society later in April 1902.
Quotes from others about the person
One colleague wrote after his death that "the reports will be searched in vain for judgments of his that are valuable".
Webster married in 1872 Louisa Mary Calthrop, daughter of William Charles Calthrop. She died in March 1877. They had one son and one daughter. Their only son, the Honourable Arthur Harold Webster (1874–1902) died childless in August 1902, aged 28, after an operation for appendicitis. The Arthur Webster Hospital, opened in 1905, was presented to the town of Shanklin, Isle of Wight by Lord Alverstone in memory of his son. The building is still in use as the Arthur Webster Clinic.
