Augustine Birrell PC, KC was an English politician, barrister, academic and author. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916, resigning in the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising. Birrell was born in Wavertree, near Liverpool, the son of a Baptist minister. He was educated at Amersham Hall school and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he was made an Honorary Fellow in 1879. He started work in a solicitor's office in Liverpool but was called to the Bar in 1875, becoming a KC in 1893 and a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1903. From 1896 to 1899 he was Professor of Comparative Law... at University College, London. In 1911 Birrell served as Lord Rector of Glasgow University. His first wife, Margaret Mirrielees, died in 1879, only a year after their marriage, and in 1888 he married Eleanor Tennyson, daughter of the poet Frederick Locker-Lampson and widow of Lionel Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They had two sons, one of whom, Frankie was later a journalist and critic and associated with the Bloomsbury Group.
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