A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime: The Experiences of the Fourth Earl Fortescue during the First World War is a study of the British Home Front on a local level from the perspective and records of a Lord Lieutenant. It is an extension of the research that I completed for my doctoral thesis which examined the county of Devon in the South West of England during the First World War through the involvement of the county’s local elite. One of the most eminent members of Devon’s local elite who featured in my research was the fourth Earl Fortescue who was the Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire during the Great War. As the Lord Lieutenant of Devon, Earl Fortescue was the representative of King George V in the county and he commanded significant influence upon the social-economic fabric of Devon. During the war years, he was a diligent figure across the county and he was involved in a number of war related committees and initiatives. Due to the fact that as Lord Lieutenant he played a leading role in the war effort in Devon during the First World War, Earl Fortescue assembled a large and diverse archive of documents related to his wartime activities. This book explores the Great War exclusively through the wartime experiences of Earl Fortescue as he recorded them in his memoirs, diaries, and a selection of his private papers.
In 1924, Earl Fortescue compiled his memoirs of his wartime experiences as a document that he described as the “typescript of work”. This typescript explains the work that fell within Fortescue’s remit in the role of Lord Lieutenant of a county during the Great War. As the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Fortescue possessed a unique and towering vantage point to which he was an unparalleled observer of wartime events in the county. This is evident in the typescript due to the fact that it is a very informative and extremely candid chronicle of the Home Front in Devon. Earl Fortescue recorded a wealth of important observations on a wide variety of topics that he was involved with which included voluntary recruitment for the Army across the county, protection of vulnerable points in Devon, Belgian refugees and food production. To help him construct this retrospective account of the war years, Fortescue referred to his memories from the war and consulted with his diaries and his private papers. The diaries that Fortescue kept from 1914 to 1918 are a rich, multifaceted and insightful account of Earl Fortescue and the Fortescue family during the war years. The great variety of the entries in Earl Fortescue’s diaries also reflect his various wartime responsibilities and the roles which were placed upon the shoulders of a man who was a Lord Lieutenant, a peer of the Realm and a member of the landed gentry in Devon. One example of how rich and insightful these diaries are is evident in the entries where Earl Fortescue chronicles political developments in the House of Lords and his discussions with notable contemporary figures. These provide a unique and inside perspective upon the House of Lords during the First World War as well as conversations that Earl Fortescue had with other Peers and notable figures such as the Dutch ambassador to the United Kingdom on subjects relating to the First World War. Alongside the original typescript and his wartime diaries, this book also presents a selection of documents related to the Great War from the “Fortescue at Castle Hill” archive housed in the Devon Heritage Centre. These records act as a representative sample of the great variety that is contained within Fortescue’s private papers. Overall, the documents in this book convey an invaluable viewpoint of the British experience of the Great War on a local level.
A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime reveals the priorities, trials and tribulations of a member of the local elite of Devon during the Great War. This book is published by Boydell and Brewer and the Devon and Cornwall Record Society. The latter is a charitable organisation that is dedicated to promote the history of Devon and Cornwall. Each year, the society publishes a volume that contains an edited collection of primary sources on various aspects of the history of both counties. A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime is the 61st volume in the Devon and Cornwall Record Society’s new series and was published to coincide with the centenary of the end of the First World War in 2018. It is my hope that scholars and students of the First World War will find the primary sources presented in this volume helpful in their studies as they have been for me in my research. The documents presented in this book impart a number of great insights and candid observations on a variety of subjects that Earl Fortescue documented upon from 1914 to 1918. With this greater focus on the war years for Earl Fortescue, this book raises awareness of his involvement with the war effort in the county and the momentous challenges that he faced as the Lord Lieutenant of Devon during the First World War.