Hoare, Samuel, 1st Viscount Templewood

Hoare, Samuel, 1st Viscount Templewood (1880–1959). Hoare came from a Norfolk family and was educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He entered Parliament in 1910 as a Conservative and sat for Chelsea until given his peerage in 1944. He took office under Bonar Law in 1922 as secretary of state for air and held the same office under Baldwin. In 1931 he became secretary of state for India in the National Government and carried the Government of India Bill, advancing towards self-government. Baldwin, in 1935, moved him to the Foreign Office. ‘Your stay at the Foreign Office will be memorable,’ wrote Beaverbrook in congratulation. It was. Hoare was plunged straight into the crisis over Italy's designs on Abyssinia. In December 1935 he drew up with Pierre Laval, French foreign minister, a plan which would have dismembered Abyssinia. The public outcry forced his resignation, though Hoare defended his deal as the best he could do for Abyssinia unless governments were prepared to fight Mussolini. Though he was brought back as a minister in 1936, and served as 1st lord of the Admiralty, home secretary, lord privy seal, and secretary of state for air, his career limped. After resigning with Chamberlain in 1940, he served for four years as ambassador to Spain, at a very critical juncture. Hoare had held high public office almost continuously for more than twenty years. He was unlucky about the Hoare–Laval pact. He was ill at the time and much of the abuse he suffered for ‘betraying the League of Nations’ was from people who would never have supported war. But there is no reason to believe that the episode brought down a future prime minister.

J. A. Cannon