8 
Sir Niyel Kingscote. 
Council, when matters relating to the forthcoming Show at 
Gloucester in 1909 were under discussion, his last appearance 
being on July 29, 1908. 
A pleasing incident in connection with Sir Nigel’s associa- 
tion with the Royal Agricultural Society was the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Laws which he received from the University 
of Cambridge when the Society visited that town for the second 
time in June, 1894. The late Duke of Devonshire was in 
that year President of the Society, and as Chancellor of the 
University he personally conferred upon some of his colleagues 
on the Council (H.R.H. the Duke of York, the Duke of 
Richmond and Gordon, Earl Cathcart, Sir John Thorold, Bart., 
Sir Nigel Kingscote, and Mr. Albert Pell) the titular degree of 
LL.D. In introducing to the Chancellor Sir Nigel Kingscote, 
the Public Orator of the University made a Latin speech 1 
in which he spoke of Sir Nigel’s services in war and peace, of 
his having done admirable service in the customary business 
of the Royal Agricultural Society, and of his being one whom 
Ennius would have described as “ egregio cordatus homo ” — 
a man of excellent heart. 
It would be impossible in this place to recount in detail 
the services rendered by Sir Nigel to the Society during the 
forty years that he was on the Council. During the whole 
of the period (18^ years) that I served under him he was 
generally recognised as a sort of permanent Chairman of the 
Council, to whom all the officials of the Society — Presidents, 
Honorary Directors, Chairmen of other Committees, and 
Secretary — took their difficulties for solution. He had a kind 
of instinct for what was right to be done, and one felt a 
moral safety in following his advice. 
In addition to his Chairmanship of the Finance Committee, 
he was for a long series of years Chairman of the House 
Committee, and an active member of the Veterinary and 
Selection Committees. He was a Trustee of Harewood House, 
a Trustee of the Queen Victoria Gifts Fund, raised in 1897 
in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee, Chairman of the 
Committee for Hanover Square Garden, and of many special 
Committees both of the Society itself or of organisations in 
which it was interested. He did not profess to be an orator, 
and indeed, when upon his legs, suffered somewhat in the 
exposition of his views from a difficulty in the choice of words. 
But his meaning was there all the same ; and as the Council 
was always a little restive at lengthy speeches, he no doubt 
achieved liis result as well as, if not better than, if his remarks 
in debate had been more fluent than they actu ally were. 
1 For the full text of this Latin oration, see K.A.S.E.' Journal for 1894, 
pp. 430 and 431 
