6 
Sir Nigel Kingscote. 
sentative near the throne of the country gentleman who, till the eve of the 
Victorian age, was an English power only second to the Sovereign or his great 
territorial nobles (pp. 34-6 and 275). 
The paid post of Superintendent of the Stables at 
Marlborough House was relinquished by Sir Nigel in 1885, 
when he took up his duties as one of the Commissioners of 
Woods and Forests. As in all his other appointments, he 
brought to this new work a diligent and punctual discharge 
of duty,- and won golden opinions from the tenants of the 
Royal estates, which it was his function to control and inspect. 
On July 9, 1886, he was also made a member of the Council 
of the Prince of Wales, and in 1888 he became Receiver- 
General of the Duchy of Cornwall, two posts which he retained 
to his death. 
After ten years’ service as Commissioner of Woods and 
Forests, Sir Nigel, who on July 2, 1889, had been made K.C.B. 
(Civil), reached the age — sixty-five — at which, under the 
Treasury Regulations, civil servants are called upon to retire. 
He retired from his Commissionership on March 3, 1895 
(exactly ten years after his appointment), on a small pension, 
and for some years held no public office, though his services 
were speedily secured by Lord Cawdor (then Chairman of the 
Great Western Railway) as a Director of that Company. 
Shortly after his present Majesty ascended the throne, however, 
the appointment of Paymaster-General of the Household fell 
vacant, and to this post the King delightedly appointed his old 
friend and faithful servant. For the seven years before his 
death, therefore, Sir Nigel was in daily attendance at his little 
office in Stable Yard, St. James’s Palace, where I often went 
to see him to discuss the difficult problems which the Royal 
Agricultural Society was then attempting to solve. On 
November 9, 1902, the King further showed his regard for 
Sir Nigel by conferring upon him the distinction of Knight 
Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. 
So much for Sir Nigel’s official appointments at various 
periods of his long and useful life. But the careful and 
punctual discharge of his obligatory duties by no means 
exhausted his activities. He was much in request as a 
member of the governing bodies of a great many institutions 
connected with agriculture, and contrived by an orderly 
management of his time and thoughts, and an exemplary 
punctuality in all his engagements, to give due attention to 
each and all. 
First and foremost in the estimation of most readers of 
these pages are his splendid services to the Royal Agricultural 
Society. His father became a member of the English 
Agricultural Society (as it was called before it got its Charter) 
