Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, 1st Baron Carlingford
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Chichester Samuel Fortescue, later Parkinson-Fortescue, 1st Baron Carlingford and 2nd Baron Clermont, KP, PC (18 January 1823 – 30 January 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician of the nineteenth century.
He was the son of Chichester Fortescue (d. 1826), MP for Louth in the Irish parliament. He came of an old family settled in Ireland since the days of Sir Faithful Fortescue (1581–1666), whose uncle, Francis Leigh, 1st Earl of Chichester, was Lord deputy. The history of the family was written by his elder brother, Thomas Fortescue, 1st Baron Clermont (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 1868–1871; he then became President of the Board of Trade (1871–1874), and later Lord Privy Seal (1881–1885) and Lord President of the Council (1883–1885). He was raised to the peerage in 1874 as Baron Carlingford.
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 George Edward Waldegrave, 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 at age 75 in 1898 without issue both titles became extinct.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
