“ He was the son of Major-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 1st baronet (1783–1839) , and was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a first-class in classics in 1831. He read for the bar and was called in 1837. He had been elected to a fellowship of All Souls’ in 1835, and his interests were chiefly literary. Among his intimate friends was Mr Gladstone, at whose marriage he assisted as “best man”; but in later life their political opinions widely differed. ”