Webster was
called to the bar in 1868, and became
QC only ten years afterwards. His practice was chiefly in commercial, railway and patent cases until (June 1885) he was appointed
Attorney-General in the
Conservative Government in the exceptional circumstances of never having been
Solicitor-General, and not at the time occupying a seat in parliament. As Attorney General Webster was prosecuting in the
Eliza Armstrong case, in the autumn of 1885, a major scandal widely reported in the press, involving a child supposedly bought for prostitution for the purpose of exposing the evils of white slavery. It led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. He was elected for
Launceston in the following month, and in November exchanged this seat for the
Isle of Wight, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the
House of Lords. Except under the brief
Gladstone administration of 1886, and the Gladstone-
Rosebery cabinet of 1892–1895, Sir Richard Webster was Attorney-General from 1885 to 1900. In 1890 he was leading counsel for
The Times in the
Parnell inquiry; in 1893 he represented Great Britain in the
Bering Sea arbitration; in 1898 he discharged the same function in the matter of the boundary between
British Guiana and
Venezuela. In the
House of Commons, and outside it, his political career was prominently associated with
church work; and his speeches were distinguished for gravity and earnestness. In July 1885, he was made a
Knight Bachelor. In December 1893, he was appointed to the
Order of St Michael and St George as a Knight Grand Cross. In January 1900 he was created a
Baronet, but in May the same year succeeded
Sir Nathaniel Lindley as
Master of the Rolls, being raised to the
peerage as
Baron Alverstone, of Alverstone in the County of Southampton and sworn of the
Privy Council, and in October of the same year he was elevated to the office of
Lord Chief Justice upon the death of
Lord Russell of Killowen. He presided over some notable trials of the era including
Hawley Harvey Crippen. Although popular, he was not considered an outstanding judge; one colleague wrote after his death that "the reports will be searched in vain for judgments of his that are valuable". He received the
honorary degree Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the
University of Edinburgh in April 1902, and was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society later the same year. In late 1902 he was in South Africa as part of a commission looking into the use of martial law sentences during the
Second Boer War. In 1903 during the
Alaska boundary dispute he was one of the members of the Boundary Commission. Against the wishes of the Canadians it was his
swing vote that settled the matter, roughly splitting the disputed territory. As a result, he became extremely unpopular in Canada. He retired in 1913, and was created
Viscount Alverstone, of
Alverstone, Isle of Wight in the County of Southampton. In 1914, Webster published
Recollections of Bar and Bench. ==Personal life==