A Radical Lord Chamberlain at a Tory Court: Lord Carrington, 1892–95

Abstract

Charles Wynn-Carrington, Earl Carrington and later Marquess of Lincolnshire was a nobleman with radical political sympathies who is remembered, if at all, as a reformer of agricultural tenancies. He was appointed by the Liberal governments of the 1880s and 1890S both to court offices and to the governorship of New South Wales. Later he was a Cabinet minister in the Camp bell-Bannerman and Asquith administrations. He was the only man to serve (by political nomination in 1892–95) as Lord Chamberlain and (by hereditary right in 1910–28) as Lord Great Chamberlain. From boyhood he was a trusted intimate of the future King Edward VII. This article draws on Carrington’s hitherto unpublished diaries, and other contemporary sources, to give a vivid account of the ceremonials, personalities and machinations of Queen Victoria’s court in the 1890s. It shows the difficulties experienced by Liberal prime ministers in filling court appointments, the haphazard organisation of many court events, the royal family’s interventions in theatrical censorship and other details of late Victorian court life.