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The Lord-Lieutenants and their Deputies

The county personified

Miles Jebb
Phillimore, 216pp, £25,

Juliet Townsend

Wednesday, 12th March 2008

Juliet Townsend on the new book from Miles Jebb

One of the glories of British public life is the way in which ancient institutions, if left unmolested by officious politicians, can evolve over centuries to become something quite different from their original function, but just as valid. This is certainly the case with the office of Lord Lieutenant. Originally created in Tudor times to take on the military duties of the over-powerful High Sheriffs, the County Lieutenancy was first and foremost responsible for the defence of the realm at a time when the country had no standing army. Over the centuries, from the threat of the Armada to the Battle of Britain, the Lieutenants struggled with a succession of militias and volunteers which were often reluctant, ill-equipped and untrained. When the Northamptonshire militia was called out to help repel the Armada, the Deputy Lieutenants mustered 2,000 men, but with only 88 muskets and 201 pikes between them. Miles Jebb in this excellent book points out that Captain Mainwaring’s Home Guard would have found themselves on familiar ground among the Elizabethan militia.

The job description of a Tudor Lord Lieutenant was daunting: ‘to inquire of all treasons, insurrections, rebellions . . . falsehoods, riots, routs, felonies and other evil deeds.’ The further injunction, ‘for the suppressing of any commotions,’ still has, perhaps, a less dramatic message for today, when the Lord Lieutenant can often be cast as peacemaker in some dispute in his or her county. The military responsibilities ebbed and flowed with periods of intense activity at times of national emergency: the Armada, 1745, the Napoleonic wars, interspersed with long years of inaction. Through it all the Lord Lieutenants soldiered on — briefly replaced during the Commonwealth by the Major Generals, but returning with undiminished zeal.

Well into the 20th century, they were drawn mainly from the ranks of the great landowning families. In 1850, all except one of the English Lord Lieutenants were peers, including the Duke of Wellington, and their average land holding was 15,738 acres. There were long family tenures. The Cavendish family, including ten Dukes of Devonshire, presided in Derbyshire between 1619 and 1968 with barely a break. There were also some extraordinary historical links across generations. Miles Jebb knew the 3rd Earl of Stradbroke, who died in 1948 and whose father had fought as a young man in the Peninsula. Both were Lord Lieutenants of Suffolk. Now the profile is very different, not least because nearly a third are women.

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