Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading (10 October 1860 to 30 December 1935) was a British lawyer, judge and statesman who sat as Member of Parliament for Reading, served as Solicitor General in 1910 and Attorney General from 1910 to 1913, and became Lord Chief Justice of England from 1913 to 1921, the first Jewish holder of that office, before going on to serve as Viceroy and Governor General of India from 1921 to 1926, British Ambassador to the United States in 1918 to 1919, and briefly Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords in 1931. Only the second practicing Jew to serve in the British Cabinet, he was implicated in but cleared of wrongdoing in the Marconi scandal of 1913, and on returning from India in 1926 he was made Marquess of Reading, becoming, by one account, the first man to rise from commoner to marquess since the Duke of Wellington and the first British Jew elevated to that rank. He died in London in 1935.
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Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading (Wikipedia)
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Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, known as the Earl of Reading from 1917 to 1926, was a British Liberal politician and judge, who served as Lord Chief Justice of England, Viceroy of India, and Foreign Secretary, the last Liberal to hold that post. The second practising Jew to be a member of the British cabinet, Isaacs was the first Jewish Lord Chief Justice, and the first British Jew to become a marquess.
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