Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/109

 ested him was that of the royal commission on the City guilds, of which he was appointed a member at the instance of his friend Sir William Harcourt, who said to Pell that 'he would give him something to keep him quiet for a year or two' (Reminiscences, p. 314). He sat also on the royal commissions as to the City parochial charities and the aged poor.

Shortly after his retirement from parliament in 1885 Pell became (30 June 1886) a member of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society, and did excellent work on its 'Journal,' and on its chemical and education committees. He contributed to its 'Journal' two articles on 'The Making of the Land in England' (1887 and 1889) and a biography of Arthur Young (1893), as well as other minor articles and notes. He was a member of the Farmers' Club, which he joined in February 1867, becoming a member of the committee in 1881, and chairman in 1888. He was one of the pioneers of the teaching of agriculture at his old university, and was made hon. LL.D. there when the Royal Agricultural Society met at Cambridge in 1894. In his later years he suffered much from deafness and from his lungs, and wintered at Torquay. There he died on 7 April 1907, and was buried at Hazelbeach.

In 1846 Pell married his cousin, Elizabeth Barbara, daughter of Sir Henry Halford, second baronet (1825-1894), being attired for the occasion 'in puce-coloured kerseymere trousers, straps, and Wellington boots, an embroidered satin waistcoat and a blue dress coat with brass buttons' (Reminiscences, p. 139).

He had no children and on his death a nephew, Albert James Pell, succeeded to the family property at Wiburton Manor, Ely, where there hangs a portrait of Pell, painted in 1886 by Miss S. Stevens.

 PEMBER, EDWARD HENRY (1833–1911), lawyer, eldest son of John Edward Rose Pember of Clapham Park, Surrey, by his wife Mary, daughter of Arthur Robson, was born at his father's house on 28 May 1833. He was educated at Harrow, and after reading for a short time with the Rev. T. Elwin, headmaster of Charterhouse School, a noted teacher, he matriculated on 23 May 1850 at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected a student in 1854. He took a first class in classical moderations in 1852, and in 1854 he was placed in the first class in literæ humaniores, and in the third class of the newly founded school of law and modern history. He entered as a student of Lincoln's Inn on 2 May 1855, reading in the chambers first of the conveyancer Joseph Burrell and then of George Markham Glffard, afterwards lord justice [q. v.]. Called to the bar on 26 Jan. 1858, he chose the Midland circuit, and laid himself out for common law practice; briefs were slow in coming when a fortunate accident introduced him to the parliamentary bar. For that class of work and tribunal Pember was admirably equipped. His fine presence, his command of flowing classical English, together with his quickness of comprehension and his readiness in repartee, soon made him a prime favourite with the committees of both houses. Edmund Beckett (afterwards Lord Grimthorpe) [q. v. Suppl. II] and George Stovin Venables [q.v.] were then the chiefs of the parliamentary bar, but Pember more than held his own with them, and after they were gone he disputed the lead at Westminster for over thirty years with such formidable rivals as Samuel Pope [q. v. Suppl. II] and (Sir) Ralph Littler [q. v. Suppl. II]. Perhaps the greatest achievement in his forensic career was his conduct of the bill for creating the Manchester Ship Canal, which was passed in July 1885 in the teeth of the most strenuous opposition; Pember's reply for the promoters, which was largely extemporary, was one of the most effective speeches ever delivered in a parliamentary committee room. His speeches as a rule were most carefully prepared, and were fine examples of literary style. His treatment of witnesses was not always adroit, and he was over-prone to argument with experts and men of science; but his straightforwardness gave him the full confidence of those before whom he practised. In April 1897 he appeared as counsel for Cecil Rhodes [q. v. Suppl. II] before the parliamentary committee appointed to investigate the origin and attendant circumstances of the Jameson raid. Pember took silk in 1874, was made a bencher of his Inn in 1876, and served the office of treasurer in 1906-7. He retired from practice in 1903 in full vigour of mind and body. He died after a short illness on 5 April 1911, at his Hampshire home. Vicar's Hill, Lymington, and was buried at Boldre Church, Brockenhurst.

Pember was throughout his fife a prominent figmre in the social and literary life of London. A brilliant talker, he was one 