Loyalty & Optimism

History

The family had been landowners in Cheshire for centuries. Thomas Newton was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford and then he joined the Diplomatic Service and worked at the British Embassy in Paris from 1881 to 1886.

He was elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for his home of Newton until 1898 when he succeeded his father and took his seat in the House of Lords as 2nd Baron Newton.

 In 1915 he was appointed as Paymaster-General.  In 1916 Lord Newton was put in charge of two departments at the Foreign Office, one dealing with foreign propaganda and the other with prisoners of war. In October 1916 he was appointed to the new Prisoner of War Department and, in this position, he negotiated the release of thousands of British prisoners of war in the First World War .