Sir John Eldon Gorst, (24 May 1835 – 4 April 1916) was a British lawyer and politician. He served as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1885 to 1886 and as Vice-President of the Committee on Education between 1895 and 1902.
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Background and education
Gorst was born in Preston, Lancashire, the son of Edward Chaddock Gorst, who took the name of Lowndes on succeeding to the family estate in 1853. He graduated third wrangler from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1857, and was admitted to a fellowship.
New Zealand
After beginning to read for the bar in London, his father's illness and death led to his sailing to New Zealand. The Māori had at that time set up a king of their own in the Waikato district and Gorst, who had made friends with the chief Wiremu Tamihana (William Thomson), known as the kingmaker, established a Māori trade school in Te Awamutu and later acted as an intermediary between the Māori and the government. Sir George Grey made him inspector of schools, then resident magistrate, and eventually civil commissioner in Upper Waikato which the Kingite Māori considered their own land. Tamihana's influence secured his safety at the start of the conflict when chief Rewi Maniapoto of the Ngāti Maniapoto tribe and his warriors attempted to kill Gorst. As Gorst was forewarned they made do by destroying the trade school, destroying a printing press and scaring all the settlers out of the Waikato where they had lived peacefully since 1830. This incident and the ambush and killing of British troops walking along a beach near New Plymouth, led to a restart of the war between the Māori King Movement and the New Zealand government in 1863. In 1884 he hosted the Māori King when he and his party came to England to seek an audience with Queen Victoria over issues to do with land. At that time Gorst was a member of the liberal Aborigine Protection League. In 1908 he published a volume of recollections, under the title of New Zealand Revisited: Recollections of the Days of my Youth.