He represented the constituency of Eye in East Suffolk from 1918 until 1923 and was involved in a difficult court case when he was forced to defend himself against a series of allegations made by a defeated political opponent.
Lyle-Samuel was the son of the Reverend George Samuel, a Baptist Minister[2] of Christ Church, Aston in Birmingham.
Eva Samuel also suffered with mental health problems and died in what was described in reports of the day as a 'pauper lunatic asylum'.
He then went into business first opening a hotel bureau and later began publication of a women's magazine but both these enterprises failed.
[11] However just a couple of weeks later, French seems to have lost his Coalition backing and was being described in the national press as an Independent Conservative.
[12] Lyle-Samuel then picked up the Coalition mantel and held the seat for the Liberals, beating French in a straight fight by a majority of 3,710 votes and 61% of the poll.
In fact Lyle-Samuel was involved in a straight fight with a National Liberal, Stephen Howard, who was presumably supported, if only tacitly, by the Conservatives in Eye.
This time he faced a three-cornered fight against Conservative and Labour opponents, giving the Tories hope that they would gain the seat.
Lyle-Samuel had by this time built a reputation as a respected local MP but his Unionist challenger was also a popular character.
Generations of his family had resided at Heveningham Hall, Saxmundham and farmed around 700 acres (2.8 km2) in the area, which made him attractive to the agricultural community.
Grantham had had a Liberal MP as recently as 1922 but like Eye the seat had been lost to the Tories at the 1923 general election against the national trend.
The newspaper had relied on an unnamed informant to source their story and the legal precedents of the day gave the papers a lot of leeway as to how far they were required to verify such disclosures.
[28] The case came back to court in December 1919, the Lord Chief Justice hearing the matter sitting with a special jury.
[29] The judgment of the Lord Chief Justice was that the defendants had had no evidence to substantiate their allegations against Lyle-Samuel or to claim that was unfit to be a Member of Parliament.
He also found that French and Pretty had made no effort to enquire into the truth of the charges they had heard against Lyle-Samuel before arranging for them to be published in the press.
[33] As noted above, his personal life was also filled with tragedy when his son, Winstone, was involved in a bobsleighing accident in Switzerland and died of his injuries at the age of 23 years.