[3] In religion Somervell was a Congregationalist; an elder of the Zion Congregational Church at Kendal and for many years the superintendent of the Sunday School there.

[1] He was a long-serving Treasurer of the London Missionary Society[4] and was regarded as an influential lay member of the country's Christian churches.

[1] Somervell's reputation as a philanthropist derives not only from his religious work but rather from his long-time association with the Kendal Charity Organization Society, of which he was for a while, chairman.

[6] He was selected to fight the seat again at a by-election on 18 March 1913[7] occasioned by the death of the sitting Tory MP Josceline Bagot.

[8] Somervell got his chance to enter the House Commons at another by-election, this time in the Liberal seat of Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The seat had been Liberal held since its creation for the 1885 general election and became vacant on the death of the sitting MP, Sir Swire Smith on 16 March 1918.

At the general election of December 1918 he was opposed by Robert Clough for the Conservatives, who appears to have been granted the Coalition Coupon, and Bland again who this time stood as an official Labour Party candidate.

Somervell seems to have fallen foul of the Lloyd George Coalition Liberals and their Conservative allies mainly because of his failure to vote for the government in the Maurice Debate, although there were other minor policy differences too.