Megmet's Fotothing

The Cavendish Memorial Fountain on the Bolton Abbey Estate. This monument was built in honour of Lord Frederick Cavendish, 2nd son of the 7th Duke of Devonshire.

Born on 30 Nov. 1836 at Compton Place, Eastbourne, Sussex, he was the second son of William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, by his marriage, 6 Aug. 1829, with Blanche Georgiana Howard, fourth daughter of George, sixth earl of Carlisle, and the brother of Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, who had also been Chief Secretary 1870-71. From 1859 to 1864 he was private secretary to Lord Granville.
He travelled in the United States in 1859–60, and in Spain in 1860. He entered parliament as a liberal for the northern division of the West Riding of Yorkshire North, 15 July 1865, and retained that seat until his death.

After serving as private secretary to the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone, from July 1872 to August 1873 he became a junior lord of the treasury, and held office until the resignation of the ministry. He performed the duties of financial secretary to the treasury from April 1880 to May 1882, when on the resignation of Mr. W. E. Forster, chief secretary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he was appointed to succeed him.

In company with Earl Spencer, Lord-Lieutenant, he proceeded to Dublin, and took the oath as chief secretary at the Castle, Dublin, on 6 May 1882; but on the afternoon of the same day, while walking in the Phoenix Park in company with Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Under Secretary, he was attacked from behind by several men from an extreme Irish nationalist group known as the Irish National Invincibles), who with knives murdered Mr. Burke and himself. The event was infamously known as the Phoenix Park Murders.

His body being brought to England, was buried in Edensor churchyard, near Chatsworth, on 11 May, when three hundred members of the House of Commons and thirty thousand other persons followed the remains to the grave.

The trial of the murderers in 1883 made it evident that the death of Cavendish was not premeditated, and that he was not recognised by the assassins; the plot was laid against Mr. Burke, and the Cavendish was murdered because he happened to be in the company of a person who had been marked out for destruction.

A window to Cavendish's memory was placed in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, at the cost of the members of the House of Commons. His imposing white Carrara marble tomb can be seen in Cartmel Priory, Cumbria. There is a memorial to him at Bolton Abbey.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia