Hugh Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood

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Hugh Richard Heathcote (Gascoyne-)Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood PC (14 October 186910 December 1956) was a British politician, known as Lord Hugh Cecil before 1941.

Cecil was both a younger son of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (who was Prime Minister three times in the late 19th century) and a cousin of British Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour, and was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford. After his graduation, he was Assistant Private Secretary to his father from 1891-92, in the latter's role as Foreign Secretary and entered the Commons as MP for Greenwich in 1895. Lord Hugh held Greenwich until 1906 and then became MP for Oxford University in 1910, which he represented for the next twenty-seven years (with a brief interruption during World War I, when he was a Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps). During the early 20th century, Cecil (known to his friends as "Linky") was the eponymous leader of the Hughligans, a group of privileged young Tory Members of Parliament critical of their own party's leadership. Modeled after Lord Randolph Churchill's Fourth Party, the Hughligans included Cecil, F.E. Smith, Arthur Stanley, Ian Malcolm, and, until 1904, Winston Churchill. In 1908, Cecil was the best man at Churchill's wedding.

Lord Hugh left the Commons in 1937 to become Provost of Eton College and was created Baron Quickswood four years later. On his death in 1956, unmarried and childless, his title became extinct.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Sir Thomas Boord
Member of Parliament for Greenwich
18951906
Succeeded by
Richard Jackson
Preceded by
Sir William Reynell Anson
John Talbot
Member of Parliament for Oxford University
2-seat constituency
(with Sir William Reynell Anson, to 1914
Rowland Edmund Prothero, 1914–1919
Sir Charles Oman, 1919–1935
Sir A. P. Herbert, from 1935)

1910–1937
Succeeded by
Sir A. P. Herbert
Sir Arthur Salter
Honorary Titles
Preceded by
Montagu James
Provost of Eton
1936–1944
Succeeded by
Claude Elliott
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
(new creation)
Baron Quickswood
1941–1956
Succeeded by
(title extinct)

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