Auction Catalogue

25 & 26 June 2008

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations and Medals

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

Lot

№ 159

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26 June 2008

Hammer Price:
£1,200

The Queen’s South Africa Medal awarded to Lieutenant A. L. Stanley, Royal Anglesey Royal Engineers (Militia), who, as Sir Arthur Stanley, K.C.M.G., was Governor of the State of Victoria during the Great War

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902
, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Lieut. A. L. Stanley, R.E. Mil.), very fine £600-700

Arthur Lyulph, 5th Baron Stanley of Alderley, K.C.M.G., was born on 14 September 1875 and educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. The Stanley family had considerable estates in Cheshire (Alderley Park) and on Anglesey and a long tradition of political involvement with the Liberal Party. His father was famous for his educational and social work and his sister, Venetia Stanley, was to earn some later notoriety for her relationship with the Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. Arthur Stanley (the Honourable from 1903, Sir Arthur from 1914 and Lord Stanley from 1925) trained as a Barrister after Oxford but interrupted his studies to serve in the Boer War.

He had been commissioned in the Royal Anglesey Royal Engineers (Militia) in 1898 and promoted Lieutenant on 16 May 1900. They volunteered for service in the Boer War and Lieutenant Stanley was one of the four Royal Anglesey R.E. (Militia) officers that served in South Africa, commanding a troop in the Company that embarked on 6 June 1900. The Company took part in operations along the lines of communication and were employed on the railway in construction work, erection of blockhouses etc., before returning to England on 16 October 1901. He was promoted Captain in 1902 for his services in South Africa and resigned his Commission in 1903. Subsequently, he joined the Cheshire Yeomanry attaining the rank of Captain.

Returning home from South Africa, he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1902. Faithful to the family’s Liberal tradition, he served on London County Council from 1904 and was elected as the Member of Parliament for the Eddisbury division of Cheshire with a comfortable majority in the 1906 general election. He was immediately appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Postmaster General (Earl Buxton) and served in that capacity until he lost his seat in the 1910 general election in what was widely seen as a backlash against Lloyd George’s creation of income tax in the 1909 budget, of which budget Stanley was a ‘hardy supporter’ (his obituary in
The Times 24 August 1931 refers). He was again defeated at Eddisbury in December 1910 and stood unsuccessfully for Oldham in 1911.

Governor of the State of Victoria

Obviously a man of talent, he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Anglesey and its High Sheriff in 1913. In November 1913, the King agreed to his appointment as the Governor of the State of Victoria, whilst still only 38 years old, and in January 1914 he was knighted and created a K.C.M.G. The Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, dined and lunched with the Stanleys before they departed for Australia. Sir Arthur Stanley’s appointment as Governor was described in his obituary as ‘warmly received’ and the Governorship itself as a successful one. His tenure in Australia lasted throughout the Great War and was extended for a further year from November 1918 at the express request of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. On his return to the United Kingdom in February 1920, he was received by the King on relinquishing his appointment. By this stage he was in ill-health, a consequence of enteric picked up whilst serving in South Africa.

Sir Arthur Stanley’s time as Governor of the State of Victoria during such an important time in her history has been recorded for posterity in a memoir written in 1977 by his daughter Adelaide Lubbock titled
People in Glass Houses – Growing up at Government House. It is a wonderfully detailed account, drawing also on Lady Stanley’s letters to Venetia Stanley, of an Edwardian heyday that disappeared with the arrival of the Great War, during which Victoria more than played her part. There is no doubt that Sir Arthur and Lady Stanley were extremely popular in Victoria and they threw themselves with vigour into the arrangements for new battalions and the war charities. In 1916, for example, Lady Stanley presented Colours to the newly formed Pioneer Battalion. It was also a time of high political tension, fermented by the Conscription Referendum of October 1916 which split the Labour Party and the industrial unrest that followed the National Party’s election to power in March 1917.

On his return to the United Kingdom, Sir Arthur Stanley took up much varied work and became a member of the House of Lords in 1925 on the death of his father. He kept extremely close ties with Australia and was a Director of the National Bank of Australasia and of the Australian Mercantile, Land and Finance Company. He was the Chairman of the Council of the Royal Colonial Society 1925-28 and sat on the Select Committee on the Abeyance of Peerages. He was also President of the British-Australasian Society and Honorary Colonel of the 29th Infantry Regiment. At the time of his death, in 1931 aged only 55, he was the Chairman of the East Africa Joint Committee.