After being called to the bar in 1880, he practised as a barrister for a number of years, being made King's Counsel and recorder of Guildford in 1904.

As Home Secretary, he introduced the Representation of the People Act 1918 and he was very prominent in the debates in the House of Commons on the police strike of August 1918.

He chaired the post war report that led to cuts to the minimum wages and regulation of collective bargaining, recommended by the Cave Committee in 1922.

[7] Roy Jenkins, an admirer of Asquith, described him as the least distinguished Lord Chancellor in the first three decades of the twentieth century.

[10] Having no children who lived to adulthood, the viscountcy became extinct on Lord Cave's death, as did the earldom when his widow died in 1938.