During his student days he gained the Incorporated Law Society's Clifford Inn Prize, and Scot. Scholarship, and the Council of Legal Educated's first class International and Roman Law Exhibition, and other law scholarships and prizes. He took a first class in Law at the
University of London; honours at Bar Call. Examination. He was elected Fellow and Member of Senate, University of London, in 1895. He became a Justice of the Peace in Middlesex, 1895. He wrote a Concise Practice of the Supreme Court of Justice; The New Land Taxes, 1909–1910. He became Judge of County Courts, in Derbyshire, in 1912. ==Political career==