RARE “19th Century Secretary of State For War\" Spencer Cavendish Cut Signature For Sale

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RARE “19th Century Secretary of State For War\" Spencer Cavendish Cut Signature:
$499.99

Up for sale the "8th Duke of Devonshire" Spencer Cavendish Clipped Signature.

July 1833 – 24 March 1908), styled Lord Cavendish of Keighley between

1834 and 1858 and Marquess of Hartington between 1858 and

1891, was a British statesman. He has the distinction of having served as

leader of three political parties: as Leader of the Liberal Party in the

House of Commons (1875–1880), of the Liberal Unionist Party (1886–1903) and of the Unionists in

the House of Lords (1902–1903).

After 1886 he increasingly voted with the Conservatives. He declined to become

prime minister on three occasions, because the circumstances were never right.

Historian Roy Jenkins said he

was "too easy-going and too little of a party man." He held some

passions, but he rarely displayed them regarding the most controversial issues

of the day. Devonshire was the eldest son of William

Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Burlington, who succeeded his cousin as Duke of Devonshire in 1858, and Lady Blanche

Cavendish (née Howard). Lord Frederick Cavendish and Lord Edward Cavendish were

his younger brothers. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,

where he graduated as MA in

1854, having taken a Second in

the Mathematical Tripos. He

later was made honorary LLD in 1862, and as DCL at Oxford University in 1878. In later life he

continued his interests in education as Chancellor of

his old university from 1892, and of Manchester University from

1907 until his death. He was Lord Rector of Edinburgh University from

1877 to 1880. After joining the special mission to Russia for Alexander II's accession, Lord Cavendish of Keighley (as he was styled at

the time) entered Parliament in

the 1857 general

election, when he was returned for North

Lancashire as a Liberal (his title "Lord Hartington",

by which he became known in 1858, was a courtesy

title; as he was not a peer in his own right he was eligible to sit

in the Commons until he succeeded his father as Duke of Devonshire in

1891). Between 1863 and 1874, Lord Hartington held various Government posts,

including Civil Lord

of the Admiralty and Under-Secretary of State

for War under Palmerston and Earl Russell. In the 1868 general

election he lost his seat; having refused the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland,

he was made Postmaster-General,

without a seat in the Cabinet. The next year he re-entered the Commons, having

been returned for Radnor.

In 1870 Hartington reluctantly accepted the post of Chief Secretary for

Ireland in Gladstone's first government.

In 1875 – the year following Liberal defeat at a general election —

he succeeded William Ewart Gladstone as

Leader of the Liberal opposition in the House of Commons, after the other

serious contender, W. E. Forster, had

indicated that he was not interested in the post. The following year, however,

Gladstone returned to active political life in the campaign against

Turkey's Bulgarian Atrocities. The

relative political fortunes of Gladstone and Hartington fluctuated – Gladstone

was not popular at the time of Benjamin Disraeli's triumph at the Congress of Berlin, but the

Midlothian Campaigns of 1879–80 marked him out as the Liberals' foremost public

campaigner. In 1880, after Disraeli's government lost the general election,

Hartington was invited by the Queen to form a government, but declined – as

did the Earl

Granville, Liberal Leader in the House of Lords – after Gladstone

made it clear that he would not serve under anybody else. Hartington chose

instead to serve in Gladstone's second government as Secretary of State for

India (1880–1882) and Secretary of State for War (1882–1885).

In 1884 he was instrumental in persuading Gladstone to send a mission to

Khartoum for the relief of General Gordon, which arrived two days too late to save him. A considerable number of the Conservative party

long held him chiefly responsible for the "betrayal of Gordon". His

lethargic manner, apart from his position as war minister, helped to associate

him in their minds with a disaster which emphasized the fact that the

government acted "too late"; but Gladstone and Lord Granville were no

less responsible than he.

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