Henry Northcote, 1st Baron Northcote
Henry Stafford Northcote, 1st Baron Northcote GCMG, GCIE, CB, PC ( born November 18, 1846 in London, England; † September 29, 1911 ) was the third Governor-General of Australia.
Career
Henry Stafford Northcote, 1st Baron Northcote, second son of the Conservative politician and statesman Sir Stafford Northcote, later 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, was born on November 18, 1846 in London, England. He attended Eton College and studied at the University of Oxford. Subsequently, he was employed by the Foreign Ministry as a diplomat.
Northcote in 1880 elected for the electoral district of Exeter in the House of Commons. This seat he held until 1899. 's Conservative government of Lord Salisbury, he held subordinate ministerial posts. In that year he was appointed Governor of Bombay. Since he had not inherited the title as second son of his father, he was raised as Baron Northcote to the peerage. He was still as governor of Bombay, as the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered him the post of Governor-General of Australia.
The first two Governors-General, Lord Hopetoun and Lord Tennyson, had had only brief tenures and problematic relationships with the Australian ministers. The British and the Australian government wanted stability and continuity, so that Northcote was used for a five-year term of office. His lifelong experience in politics and his time in Bombay made him suitable occupation. He was neither authoritarian nor as Hopetoun honest as Tennyson, which made a good impression on the politicians and the public.
This was important because Northcote was the first Australian Governor-General, who had to deal with unstable political conditions. In April 1904 Prime Minister Alfred Deakin resigned from his office. He was followed in quick succession the laboratory leader Chris Watson, the Free Trade leader George Reid and then finally Deakin again. Both Watson and Reid, Northcote asked before their resignations to dissolve parliament; in both cases, he refused. It was a sign of Northcote's strong position that these decisions were generally respected.
Like its predecessors saw Northcote himself both as a diplomatic representative of the British government as well as viceroy. He was also actively involved in the negotiations between the British and the Australian government over the controversial trade and shipping interests, although his influence waned after 1906, when the Liberal Party came to power in the UK.
Northcote and Deakin had been at odds with each other in 1907, when the governor-general refuses to instructions from London to agree to a law limiting the possibility to appeal against decisions of Australian courts appeals before the Privy Council in London. Deakin, although a faithful Emperors List, believed that Australia's parliaments in Australia should be sovereign, and said it so bluntly Northcote. This prompted Northcote to announce in February 1908 that he wished to resign a year earlier. He left in September Australia. In England, his health deteriorated, so that he died childless in 1911. His barony became extinct with his death.
Lady Alice Northcote
Henry Stafford Northcote's wife, Lady Alice Northcote was appointed in 1919 to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.