Hugh Fortescue, 4th Earl Fortescue

Hugh Fortescue, 4th Earl Fortescue KCB (16 April 1854 – 29 October 1932), styled Viscount Ebrington from 1861 to 1905, was an English Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1881 until 1892 and later in the House of Lords having inherited his father's peerages.

He was a J.P. for Devon and for South Molton, the town close to the family seat of Castle Hill, Filleigh.

When Viscount Ebrington he purchased the reversion of about 20,000 acres comprising the former royal forest of Exmoor from Sir Frederick Knight (1812–1897) who with his father John Knight (d.1851) had introduced livestock farming to that previously undeveloped and barren moorland.

[6] Ebrington used the residence constructed by James Boevey in 1654 at Simonsbath, ten miles NE of Castle Hill, as a hunting lodge and for his work in continuing agricultural development.

He instituted an annual horse show at Exford, which helped to increase the quality of hunters used on Exmoor.

A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime: The Experiences of the Fourth Earl Fortescue during the First World War.

Hugh Fortescue, 4th Earl Fortescue (1854–1932), KCB, ADC, Lord Lieutenant of Devon, Lt. Col. of Royal North Devon Hussars
Hugh Fortescue, 4th Earl Fortescue (1854–1932). Engraving by Joseph Brown from a photograph by John Mayall
"The Devon and Somerset" , caricature of Viscount Ebrington by Ape , Vanity Fair 19 February 1887