[5][6] In November 1902 he was appointed Paymaster General in the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour,[7] and was admitted to the Privy Council in December of the same year.

[8] He remained in this post until the government fell in December 1905, and he lost his seat in the 1906 general election that followed shortly after.

The coalition fell in 1922, but Somerleyton remained as a whip also in the Conservative administrations of Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin.

[11] He volunteered for active service in South Africa during the Second Boer War, and was on 10 March 1900 appointed captain in the Imperial Yeomanry and attached to its 18th battalion.

He died in February 1935, aged 77, and was succeeded in the baronetcy and barony by his eldest son, Francis Savile Crossley.