RICHMOND Charles Lennox, Duke of - LS 1794 regarding troops in the Southern District
Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of RICHMOND (1735-1806)
Letter Signed (“Richmond”) to Lord Amherst, regarding the distribution of troops in the Southern District.1 page folio with integral blank leaf, Goodwood, 3 October 1794.
“Your Lordship having signified your intention of leaving to me the arrangement of the Regiments to be Stationed in the Southern District during the next Winter, I have to request that you will be pleased to direct the Quarter Master General to send me the arrangements of the numbers Your Lordship has approved for each Quarter in order that I may proceed in submitting to Your Lordship the distribution I would recommend for the several Corps.”
The verso of the blank leaf has a lengthy pencilled note, most likely a draft reply, which is still largely legible.
“. . . The Q Master General is directed to make out an arrangement of the numbers proposed for each Quarter, which shall be sent to Your Grace as soon as it is finished. . . Waggons should be supplied for carrying the remainder, when the Regiment break up Camp yet as Your Grace has taken measures for putting the Post[?] Horses to Grass at a proper distance from the Coast which will save their being billeted . . . the Publicans, and will also be a great saving to the Public, I cannot doubt but His Majesty will highly approve Your Grace’s proposal and that Waggons should be supplied in the usual way by an Order from the War Office.”
With the advent of the French Revolutionary Wars, the organisation of Britain’s defences in districts was vital, and the Southern District particularly important as the area most vulnerable to a French invasion.
Charles Lennox served his country as a soldier, diplomat and politician, but he is often left in the shade of his remarkable sisters, Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah. In his early years, Lennox espoused liberal, even radical, views, but by the 1780s things had changed, and his shift to the Tories caused an irreparable breach with his nephew, Charles James Fox.
Lord Amherst was, at the time Commander-in-Chief of the Forces.
The first Duke of Richmond acquired Goodwood in the late seventeenth century and remains the family seat to this day. The famous Goodwood Racecourse was created in 1802, during the lifetime of Charles Lennox.
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