He was educated at Charterhouse School and King's College, Cambridge, and was later called to the Bar, Middle Temple.
However, in 1900 he was elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds East.
He was made a King's Counsel in 1919 and created a Baronet, of Horsted Keynes in the County of Sussex, in 1924.
[2] On his retirement from the House of Commons in 1936 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cautley, of Lindfield in the County of Sussex.
[3] Cautley married at St. Paul's Church, Woodhouse Eaves, Leicestershire, on 1 October 1902, Alice Bohun Fox, daughter of B. H. C. Fox, JP, of Maplewell, Woodhouse Eaves;[4] they had no children.