Eustace Balfour of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury. His paternal grandfather James Balfour was a nabob who had made the family's fortune as a contractor supplying the Royal Navy in India and became a Tory Member of Parliament (MP), while his mother's father was a Conservative cabinet minister in the 1850s. Her brother, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Lord Salisbury, was three times Prime Minister before being succeeded in 1902 by Eustace's elder brother Arthur Balfour. Eustace Balfour was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1873. He then studied architecture under Basil Champneys, the designer of Newnham
Arthur Balfour Kingdom or becoming independent. From 1891 he led the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, serving under his uncle, Lord Salisbury, whose government won large majorities in 1895 and 1900. A brilliant debater, he was bored by the mundane tasks of party management. In July 1902 he succeeded his uncle as Prime Minister. He oversaw reform of British defence policy and supported Jackie Fisher's naval innovations. He secured the Entente Cordiale with France, leaving Germany in the cold. He cautiously embraced the imperial preference championed by Joseph Chamberlain, but resignations from the Cabinet over tariffs left his party divided.