Arthur Griffith-Boscawen

Sir Arthur Sackville Trevor Griffith-Boscawen PC (18 October 1865 – 1 June 1946) was a British politician in the Conservative Party whose career was cut short by losing a string of Parliamentary elections. Biography Griffith-Boscawen was born in Trefalyn, Denbighshire, son of Captain Boscawen Trevor Griffith, of the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers who assumed the additional surname of Boscawen in 1875 when his mother died. He was educated at Rugby School and Queen's College, Oxford. In 1892 he was elected Member of Parliament for Tonbridge in Kent, a county for which he became JP in 1896. Salisbury, whom he accused of ignoring 90% of MPs, appointed him private secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer Michael Hicks-Beach in 1895, a job he held before becoming Parliamentary Charity Commissioner in 1900, serving until 1905. Griffith-Boscawen may have been influential in helping to choose Alfred Milner as the new Governor of Cape Colony. The aged Lord Rosmead was retiring, leaving the government, and Chamberlain in particular desperate to find a replacement. The choice of Milner, a brilliant Oxford scholar, was universally acclaimed in parliament as a shrewd option; the candidate was warmly praised for his courage in coming forward during the Jameson Raid crisis. Griffith-Boscawen lost his Tonbridge seat in the 1906 general election. He unsuccessfully contested East Denbighshire at a by-election in August that year, and Dudley, Worcestershire at the first general election held in 1910, before being returned for the latter seat later that year. He also sat as a member of the London County Council from 1910 to 1913; he was knighted in 1911.