Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 6th Earl of Radnor


Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 6th Earl of Radnor, , styled Viscount Folkestone from 1889 to 1900, was a British Conservative Party politician and a British Army officer.

Early life

Pleydell-Bouverie was the son of William Pleydell-Bouverie, 5th Earl of Radnor and Helen Matilda Chaplin. He was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

After two years' service as assistant private secretary to the right Hon. Henry Chaplin, from 1890 to 1892, he was elected to the House of Commons at the 1892 general election as Member of Parliament for the Wilton division of Wiltshire, and held the seat until he succeeded to the peerage in 1900. In November 1901 he was elected Mayor of Folkestone for the following year, and when he vacated the office the following year he donated a sum equal to the salary to the Victoria Hospital. During his year as Mayor, he received the German Emperor Wilhelm II on his visit to Shorncliffe to inspect a cavalry regiment in November 1902.
Beyond political life, he was an officer in the 4th Battalion, the Wiltshire Regiment. He saw active service in South Africa in 1900 when he volunteered to serve in a company attached to a regular battalion during the Second Boer War. Leaving Southampton for Cape Town in February 1900, he returned later the same year as he succeeded to the title on the death of his father. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and brevet colonel commanding the 4th Battalion, and later served in India from 1914 to 1917, where he was Brigadier-General of the Dehra Dun Brigade. In 1918 he was Director of Agricultural Production for the British Expeditionary Force.
He also chaired a Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, between 1904 and 1908. On 27 June 1919, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Wiltshire.
Lord Radnor served as Governor of the French Hospital. Successive Earls of Radnor were governors of the hospital from the eighteenth century to 2015.

Family

Before inheriting the earldom, Pleydell-Bouverie married Julian Eleanor Adelaide Balfour, daughter of Charles Balfour, on 20 January 1891, and they had ten children: