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Chichester Samuel Fortescue, Baron Carlingford

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Baron (1823-1898), British statesman, son of Chichester Fortescue (d. 1826), M.P. for Louth in the Irish parliament, was born in January 1823. He came of an old family settled in Ireland since the days of Sir Faithful Fortescue (1581-1666), whose uncle, Lord Chichester, was lord deputy. The history of the family was written by his elder brother Thomas (1815-1887), who in 1852 was created Baron Clermont. The future Lord Carlingford, then Mr Chichester Fortescue, went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a first in classics (1844) and won the chancellor's English essay (1846); and in 1847 he was elected to parliament for Louth as a Liberal. He became a junior lord of the treasury in 1854, and subsequently held minor offices in the Liberal administrations till in 1865 he was made chief secretary for Ireland under Lord Russell, a post which he again occupied under Gladstone in 1868-1870; he then became president of the Board of Trade (1871-1874), and later lord privy seal (1881-1885) and president of the council (1883-1885). He was raised to the peerage in 1874. He parted from Gladstone on the question of Irish Home Rule, but in earlier years he was his active supporter on Irish questions. His influence in society was due largely to his wife, Frances (1821-1879), previously the wife of the 7th Earl Waldegrave, whom he married in 1863. In 1887 his brother, Lord Clermont, died, and Carlingford inherited his peerage; but on his own death without issue on the 30th of January 1898 both titles became extinct.