Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, KG, GCB, GCVO, TD, PC, JP (4 April 1865 – 4 February 1948), styled The Hon.

Frederick Stanley was the second son of Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, who was three times Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

[6] On 11 January 1899, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the reserve of officers,[7] and on 17 May, was made honorary colonel of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.

Lord Stanley served on the staff in the Second Boer War, and was appointed Chief Press Censor at Cape Town, graded as assistant adjutant-general, on 18 January 1900.

In October 1915, as Director-General of Recruiting, he instituted the Derby Scheme, a halfway house between voluntary enlistment and conscription (which the Government was reluctant to adopt).

It was not sufficiently successful in spite of the fact that the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell by the Germans on 12 October 1915 was used in recruitment rallies and conscription followed in 1916.

In this position he was a strong supporter of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir William Robertson and of the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, Field Marshal Haig.

Haig privately had little respect for him, writing to his wife (10 January 1918) that Derby was "like the feather pillow, bear[ing] the mark of the last person who sat on him" and remarking that he was known in London as the "genial Judas".

[15] Derby and John Joseph Woodward (who was also secretary) jointly founded the ex-servicemen's organisation, the Comrades of the Great War in 1917 as a right-wing alternative to the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers (NADSS) and the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers (NFDSS), the latter of whom had put a candidate up against his son Lord Stanley in the 1917 Liverpool Abercromby by-election.

A champion sprinter and a stallion par excellence, Phalaris was responsible for establishing the most dominant sire line in Europe and later, the United States through his four sons – Sickle, Pharamond, Pharos and Fairway.

Their only daughter, Lady Victoria, died aged 35, from a fractured skull sustained in a horse-riding accident caused by striking her head on a low iron railway arch.

[citation needed] A county directory of 1903 describes Coworth House as "an ancient building standing in a thickly wooded park".

As Derby also owned Knowsley Hall in Lancashire, his principal country seat, and a London townhouse in Stratford Place, St James's, Coworth tended to be occupied only during Ascot race meetings.

A month later her former home was advertised for sale in The Times; and at this or a subsequent date was converted to use as a Roman Catholic convent school.

[citation needed] Lord Derby was portrayed by Frank Middlemass in an episode of the 1981 TV miniseries Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years.