John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, GCSI GCVO OBE PC

Wikipedia Biographical Summary

"...John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon GCSI GCVO OBE PC (28 February 1873 – 11 January 1954) was a senior British politician who held senior Cabinet posts from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second.

Simon is one of only two people to have served as Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other being Richard Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden. He also served as Lord Chancellor, the most senior position in the British legal system. Beginning his career as a Liberal, he joined the National Government in 1931...

...John Simon was the son of Edwin Simon (1843–1920), a Congregational minister in Manchester, and Fanny Allsebrook (1846–1936). Educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh and Wadham College, Oxford...

...In 1931, when the Liberals split once again, Simon became leader of the Liberal Nationals...Simon served as Foreign Secretary under MacDonald, highlights of his tenure of office being the repudiation by Germany, under its new chancellor Adolf Hitler, of the League of Nations and of Disarmament efforts, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria....Simon then served as Home Secretary, during which time he passed the Public Order Act 1936 restricting the activities of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons under Baldwin and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Chamberlain...

...By 1940 Simon, along with his successor as Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, had come to be seen as one of the "Guilty Men" responsible for appeasement of the dictators ("the snakiest of the lot" in Hugh Dalton's description), and like Hoare his continued service in the War Cabinet was not regarded as acceptable in the new coalition. Simon was raised to the peerage as Viscount Simon, of Stackpole Elidor in the County of Pembroke, and became Lord Chancellor in Churchill's government...

...He married Ethel Venables in June 1899 in Headington, Oxfordshire, later to be vice-principal of St Hugh's Hall. They had three children - Margaret (Mrs. Geoffrey Edwards), Joan (Mrs. John Bickford-Smith) and John Gilbert, the 2nd Viscount Simon, (1902–1993). His first wife died soon after the birth of her son in September 1902. He remarried in 1917 Kathleen Rochard Manning (1863/4-1955) from Ireland, daughter of Francis Eugene Harvey and herself a widow with one son who had for a while been governess to Sir John Simon's children."

SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 15 May 2011, 16:56 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_John_Simon> [accessed 6 June 2011]

created 20 May 1940 Viscount Simon, of Stackpole Elidor in the County of Pembroke

Fellow of All Souls 1897; Member of Parliament (National Liberal) for South West Essex 1906-18 and for Spen Valley 1922-40; Solicitor-General 1910-13; KCVO 1911; Attorney-General 1913-15; Privy Councillor 1913; Secretary of State for Home Affairs 1915-16 and 1935-37; OBE 1919; GCSI 1930; Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1931-35; Chancellor of the Exchequer 1937-40; GCVO 1937; Lord High Chancellor of the United Kingdom 1940-45