Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Webster, Richard Everard
WEBSTER, RICHARD EVERARD, Viscount Alverstone (1842–1915), judge, the second son of Thomas Webster, Q.C. [q.v.], by his wife, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Richard Calthrop, of Swineshead Abbey, Lincolnshire, was born 22 December 1842 in Chester Place, London. He was educated at King's College School, the Charterhouse, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He took his degree as 36th wrangler in 1865, having earlier in that year won the mile and two-mile races against Oxford. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn 29 April 1868, taking chambers at 2 Pump Court, where he remained throughout his career. He soon developed a large practice as a junior, and in 1878, less than ten years from his call, he became a Q.C. When Lord Salisbury formed his government in 1885, he appointed Webster attorney-general, who then entered the House of Commons as member for Launceston. At the next election he was chosen for the Isle of Wight, and he sat for that constituency until he became a judge.
Webster was attorney-general three times, from June 1885 to February 1886, from August 1886 to August 1892, and from July 1895 to May 1900, over twelve years in all. For more than half that period (before 1895) the system allowed him to continue his great private practice, and it was in this way that in 1888 and 1889 he acted as leading counsel for The Times at the Parnell commission. It is unlikely that in thirty-two years at the bar any man ever had more work to do, or earned more money. In 1893 he appeared for Great Britain in the Behring Sea arbitration, and was made a G.C.M.G. In 1899 he was leading counsel in the Venezuela arbitration and was created a baronet.
On 10 May 1900 Webster was appointed master of the Rolls in succession to Sir Nathaniel (afterwards Baron) Lindley [q.v.], and made a privy councillor. A month later he was created Baron Alverstone, of Alverstone in the Isle of Wight. On 22 October 1900 he became lord chief justice of England, upon the death of Lord Russell of Killowen. In 1903 he was arbitrator, with two Canadian and three American colleagues, on the Alaska Boundary question. The decision, which was that of Lord Alverstone and the three Americans, may have been right, but it made him, and for a time Great Britain, very unpopular in Canada. In October 1913 he resigned his office on account of ill-health, and was made a viscount. In 1914 he published Recollections of Bar and Bench, a book which is badly written and not interesting. He died at the house which he had built at Cranleigh in Surrey 15 December 1915, and was buried in West Norwood cemetery. He had married in 1872 Mary Louisa, only daughter of William Calthrop, M.D., of Withern, Lincolnshire; she died in 1877, leaving one son and one daughter, but the son died before his father.
Perhaps the truest, and most modest, remark in Alverstone's Recollections is that throughout his life he had been favoured by good fortune. He was not a very clever man, nor a learned lawyer, nor a good speaker—either in the courts or in parliament. His equipment as an advocate consisted mainly in a splendid physique, a forcible personality, and immense industry. As a judge he was dignified, and sitting with a jury was satisfactory, though not distinguished; but the reports will be searched in vain for judgments of his that are valuable as expositions of the law. Socially he displayed a somewhat boisterous geniality which his detractors sometimes regarded as artificial. He was generous with his money, delighted in playing billiards and singing drawing-room songs, and was an assiduous church-goer: during forty years he sang in the choir at Kensington parish church.
[The Times, 16 December 1915; Law Journal, 18 December 1915; Memoranda in the Law Reports; Law Lists; Recollections of Bar and Bench, 1914. ]