Hamilton Cuffe (1848-1934)

He was born in Surrey and educated at Radley and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in the Royal Navy from 1860 to 1863 and was called to the bar in 1872. He was Solicitor to the Treasury at Whitehall, Queen's Proctor, and Director of Public Prosecutions. In 1898, his elder brother died and he unexpectedly succeeded to the Earldom of Desart and the family home in Ireland, Desart Court. He and his family now spent their summers in Ireland and his daughter, Sybil, recalled that it was, "agreeably like living in a chapter of Reminiscences  of an Irish R.M." The Earl was transformed from, "a tired lawyer, or harassed civil servant... into the humorous, meditative distinguished country gentleman that his father and grandfather, to judge by the portraits in the hall, must have been before him". As Baron Desart, he sat in the House of Lords from 1909 and in 1913 he took a position on the Privy Council. From 1917-18, he was a Unionist delegate to the Irish Convention. In 1920, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Kilkenny, a post he held until the Irish Free State was born two years later and the post was abolished. His ancestral home, Desart Court, was burned to the ground in 1923 by the IRA which "affected him permanently". He retired to his townhouse at 2 Rutland Gardens in London. He and his wife were the parents of two daughters and therefore the Earldom expired on his death. His daughter, Sybil, was the first Englishwoman of title to marry an American.