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Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (September 7, 1836 - April 22, 1908) was a British Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister from December 5 1905 until resigning due to ill health on April 3 1908.
Campbell-Bannerman was born in Glasgow in 1836 as "Henry Campbell" to Sir James Campbell, Lord Provost of Glasgow and Janet Bannerman. He was educated at Glasgow High School before going on to study at both Glasgow and Cambridge universities. In 1868 he was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal, and entered Gladstone's second cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884. In Gladstone's Third (1886) and Fourth (1892-1894) Cabinets and Rosebery's Government (1894-1895) he served as Secretary for War, where his most notable accomplishment was persuading the Duke of Cambridge, the Queen's cousin, and on obstacle to necessary army reforms, to resign as Commander-in-Chief. This earned Campbell-Bannerman a knighthood. In 1898 Sir Henry succeeded Sir William Vernon Harcourt as leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons. Campbell-Bannerman had a difficult job holding together the strongly divided party, and when the Liberals returned to power in 1905, he became Prime Minister.
Campbell-Bannerman's premiership was a frustrating one, as the Conservative Lords blocked most of the Liberals' reform measures, but it did see the achievement of an Entente with Russia in 1907 by his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. In that same year, Campbell-Bannerman achieved the honour of becoming the Father of the House but his health took a turn for the worse, and he died on 3 April 1908 at 10 Downing Street, the only British Prime Minister to do so to date. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Henry Asquith.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government, December 1905 - April 1908
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