 He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, The King's School, Chester and Brasenose College, Oxford, and joined the Civil Service in 1896.He served as Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer H. H. Asquith from 1905 to 1908, as Principal Clerk in the Treasury and First Treasury Officer of Accounts from 1908 to 1911, as Joint Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 1913 to 1919 and as the Principal British Delegate to the Reparations Commission in Paris from 1919 to 1925.During the First World War he was the government's chief economic adviser.