Hardinge Stanley Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury (
3 September 1823 -
11 December 1921) was a leading
barrister, politician and government
minister, serving as
Solicitor General for England and Wales and
Lord Chancellor of
Great Britain. His lasting legacy was the compilation of a complete digest of "
Laws of England" (1905-1916), a major reference work published in many volumes and often called simply "Halsbury's". "Halsbury's Laws" was followed by a second multiple-volume reference work in 1929, "
Halsbury's Statutes", and later by "
Halsbury's Statutory Instruments".
Hardinge Giffard was the third son of
Stanley Lees Giffard, editor of the
Standard newspaper, and was born in
London. He was educated at
Merton College, Oxford, and was called to the bar at the
Inner Temple in
1850, joining the North
Wales and
Chester circuit. Afterwards he had a large practise at the central criminal court and the
Middlesex sessions, and he was for several years junior prosecuting counsel to the
Treasury. He was engaged in most of the celebrated trials of his time, including the
Overend and Gurney and the
Tichborne cases. He became
Queen's Counsel in
1865, and a bencher of the Inner Temple.
Giffard twice contested
Cardiff in the
Conservative interest, in
1868 and
1874, but he was still without a seat in the
House of Commons when he was appointed Solicitor General by
Disraeli in
1875 and received the honour of
knighthood. In
1877 he succeeded in obtaining a seat, when he was returned for
Launceston, which borough he continued to represent until his elevation to the peerage in
1885.
He was then created
Baron Halsbury, of Halsbury in the County of Devon, and appointed Lord Chancellor, thus forming a remarkable exception to the rule that no criminal lawyer ever reaches the woolsack. He resumed the position in
1886 and held it until
1892 and again from
1895 to
1905, his tenure of the office, broken only by the brief Liberal ministries of 1886 and 1892-1895, being longer than that of any Lord Chancellor since
Lord Eldon. In
1898 he was created
Earl of Halsbury and
Viscount Tiverton, of Tiverton in the County of Devon. Among Conservative Lord Chancellors Lord Halsbury must always hold a high place, his grasp of legal principles and mastery in applying them being pre-eminent among the judges of his day.
During the crisis over the
Parliament Act of 1911, Halsbury was one of the principal leaders of the rebel faction of Tory peers—labelled the "Ditchers"—that resolved on all out opposition to the government's bill whatever happened. At a meeting of Conservative peers on the 21 July of that year, Halsbury shouted out "I will
divide even if I am alone". As Halsbury left the meeting a reporter asked him what was going to happen. Halsbury immediately replied: "Government by a Cabinet controlled by rank socialists".
Halsbury was also President of the
Royal Society of Literature, Grand Warden of English
Freemasons, and High Steward of the
University of Oxford. 
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