Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 3rd Viscount and 1st Earl of

Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 3rd Viscount and 1st Earl of (b. 16 Apr. 1881, d. 23 Dec. 1959). Viceroy of India 1926–31; British Foreign Secretary 1938–41 Born in Powderham Castle, Devon, he was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was elected to Parliament in 1910 for the Conservative Party to represent Ripon. He served in World War I as a cavalry officer. He was made President of the Board of Education under Bonar Law in 1922, and was Minister of Agriculture in Baldwin's second government from 1924. In 1926, he was sent to India as viceroy, having been given the title of Lord Irwin. It was this name that he gave to his famous Irwin Declaration of 1929; this made concessions to the increasingly active Indian nationalists, by announcing a Round Table Conference to discuss India's future, and by pledging that Britain aimed to give India Dominion status. He also agreed to negotiate with Mohandas K. Gandhi, whom he had imprisoned after the Salt March. He was replaced as viceroy in 1931, and became Chancellor of Oxford University in 1933. He had returned to the government in 1932, partly to assist its Indian reforms, and eventually became Foreign Secretary in 1938. In that post, he was a noted advocate of appeasement, accepting the Anschluss of Germany and Austria, and the separation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement. In 1939 he refused an invitation to Moscow, and thus lost any chance of concluding an anti-German agreement with the Soviet Union. He supported Chamberlain's view in September 1939 that there was no alternative to war. Despite George VI's preference for him, he did not form a government in May 1940 since he did not command the support of the Conservative Party, which opted for Churchill instead. He was ambassador to the USA in 1941–6. He was a devout High Anglican throughout his life.