The eldest son of John Edward Rose Pember of Clapham Park, Surrey, by his wife Mary, daughter of Arthur Robson, he was born at his father's house on 28 May 1833.
He entered as a student of Lincoln's Inn on 2 May 1855, reading in the chambers first of the conveyancer Joseph Burrell and then of George Markham Giffard, afterwards lord justice.
His fine presence, his command of flowing classical English, together with his quickness of comprehension and his readiness in repartee, soon made him a prime favourite with the committees of both houses.
Edmund Beckett (afterwards Lord Grimthorpe) and George Stovin Venables were then the chiefs of the parliamentary bar, but Pember more than held his own with them, and after they were gone he disputed the lead at Westminster for over thirty years with such formidable rivals as Samuel Pope [q. v. Suppl.
Perhaps the greatest achievement in his forensic career was his conduct of the bill for creating the Manchester Ship Canal, which was passed in July 1885 in the teeth of the most strenuous opposition; Pember's reply for the promoters, which was largely extemporary, was one of the most effective speeches ever delivered in a parliamentary committee room.
In April 1897 he appeared as counsel for Cecil Rhodes before the parliamentary committee appointed to investigate the origin and attendant circumstances of the Jameson raid.
During the days of waiting at the bar he was a constant contributor to the weekly press, and he is generally credited with the famous epigram on Lord Westbury's judgment in the 'Essays and Reviews' case — 'Hell dismissed with costs.'
During the latter years of his life his leisure was largely occupied in the composition of classical plays in English, cast in the Attic mould, drawn from scriptural and mythological themes.