parliamentary private secretary was Sir Robert Mowbray, an older contemporary of
Milner's at Balliol and a Fellow of All Souls for fortysix years (1873-1919).
As a result of Goschen's influence, Milner was appointed successively Under
Secretary of Finance in Egypt (1887-1892), chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue
(1892-1897), and High Commissioner to South Africa (1897-1905). With the last
position he combined several other posts, notably Governor of the Cape of Good Hope
(1897-1901) and Governor of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony (1901-1905).
But Goschen's influence on Milner was greater than this, both in specific matters and in
general. Specifically, as Chancellor of Oxford University in succession to Lord Salisbury
(1903-1907) and as an intimate friend of the Warden of All Souls, Sir William Anson,
Goschen became one of the instruments by which the Milner Croup merged with All
Souls. But more important than this, Goschen introduced Milner, in the period 1886-
1905, into that extraordinary circle which rotated about the Cecil family.
Chapter 2—The Cecil Bloc
The Milner Group could never have been built up by Milner's own efforts. He had no
political power or even influence. All that he had was ability and ideas. The same thing is
true about many of the other members of the Milner Group, at least at the time that they
joined the Group. The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the
power of the Cecil family and its allied families such as the Lyttelton (Viscounts
Cobham), Wyndham (Barons Leconfield), Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Balfour,
Wemyss, Palmer (Earls of Selborne and Viscounts Wolmer), Cavendish (Dukes of
Devonshire and Marquesses of Hartington), and Gathorne-Hardy (Earls of Cranbrook).
The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence,
and privilege controlled by the Cecil family. It is not possible to describe here the
ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886.
This Cecil Bloc was built up by Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount
Cranborne and third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903). The methods used by this man
were merely copied by the Milner Group. These methods can be summed up under three
headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the
recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls) and the linking of these men to the
Cecil Bloc by matrimonial alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power;
and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions
of power shielded as much as possible from public attention.
The triple-front penetration can be seen in Lord Salisbury's own life. He was not only
Prime Minister for a longer period than anyone else in recent history (fourteen years
between 1885 and 1902) but also a Fellow of All Souls (from 1853) and Chancellor of
Oxford University (1869-1903), and had a paramount influence on
for many years. He practiced a shameless nepotism, concealed to some extent by the
shifting of names because of acquisition of titles and female marital connections, and
redeemed by the fact that ability as well as family connection was required from
appointees.
Lord Salisbury's practice of nepotism was aided by the fact that he had two brothers
and two sisters and had five sons and three daughters of his own. One of his sisters was
the mother of Arthur J. Balfour and Gerald W. Balfour. Of his own daughters, one
married the Second Earl of Selborne and had a son, Lord Wolmer, and a daughter, Lady
Mabel Laura Palmer. The daughter married the son of Earl Grey, while the son married
the daughter of Viscount Ridley. The son, known as Lord Wolmer until 1942 and Lord
Selborne since that date, was an M.P. for thirty years (1910-1940), a figure in various
Conservative governments since 1916, and Minister of Economic Warfare in 1942-1945.
Of Lord Salisbury's five sons, the oldest (now fourth Marquess of Salisbury), was in
almost every Conservative government from 1900 to 1929. He had four children, of
whom two married into the Cavendish family. Of these, a daughter, Lady Mary Cecil,
married in 1917 the Marquess of Hartington, later tenth Duke of Devonshire; the older
son, Viscount Cranborne, married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, niece of the ninth Duke of
Devonshire. The younger son, Lord David Cecil, a well-known writer of biographical
works, was for years a Fellow of Wadham and for the last decade has been a Fellow of
New College. The other daughter, Lady Beatrice Cecil, married W. G. A. Ormsby Gore
(now Lord Harlech), who became a member of the Milner Group. It should perhaps be
mentioned that Viscount Cranborne was in the House of Commons from 1929 to 1941
and has been in the House of Lords since. He was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in
1935-1938, resigned in protest at the Munich agreement, but returned to office in 1940 as