Appointed whip in 1899, Gladstone was an innovator who provided a long-term strategy, kept the party from splitting over the Second Boer War, introduced more modern constituency structures; and encouraged working-class candidates.

He was no firebrand but a good party man whose common sense inclined him to be less Gladstonian in the matter of state intervention then than his famous father had been.

Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule convinced them to switch away from the Conservatives and support the Liberals using the 86 seats in Parliament they controlled.

In 1892, on his father's return to power, he was made Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department,[1] and two years later he became First Commissioner of Works in Lord Rosebery's government,[10] at which time he was also sworn into the Privy Council.

[11] In 1895 he gave the first contract to Mary Howard Ashworth to create the first typing facility in the Houses of Parliament[12] just before the Liberals fell from power.

[15] According to historian Professor Ian Machin, Gladstone was not among “the foremost New Liberals such as Lloyd George and Churchill,” but he nevertheless played a large part in carrying a number of the Liberal welfare reforms during his time in office, including the Workmen's Compensation Act 1906, the Children Act 1908 (8 Edw.

[16] As Prince of Wales, King Edward VII had come to enjoy warm and mutually respectful relations with W. E. Gladstone, whom Queen Victoria detested.

In September 1908 Herbert permitted Roman Catholic priests in vestments, led by Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, to carry the Host in a procession through the streets of London.

The Home Secretary was on holiday in Scotland at the time, and did not reply, giving rise to false rumours that the King – who was known to take an interest in Roman Catholic rituals when abroad – favoured the procession.

[24] In 1901 Lord Gladstone married Dorothy Mary, daughter of Sir Richard Paget, 1st Baronet, who was over twenty years his junior.