Though he declined the assistant editorship of the Manchester Guardian, a few months before being called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1880 he accepted John Walter's offer to join the editorial staff of The Times.
By now the staff saw themselves as a collective body serving the public interest, a sense preserved by its ongoing editorial practice of supporting whichever government was in power at the time.
The paper's purchase and publication of Richard Piggott's forged letters purportedly showing a connection between Irish Parliamentary Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell and the Phoenix Park murders was primarily motivated by the desire for a scoop rather than because of politics, and Buckle's subsequent offer of his resignation was rejected by Walter.
[1] In the years that followed, Buckle's control over the day-to-day operations of The Times declined due to administrative reorganisation, as authority was gradually decentralised within the paper.
The death of the managing director, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell, three years later eliminated the last check on the owner, and Northcliffe forced Buckle's resignation on 31 July 1911.