He therefore initiated (though successors played a bigger part) a period of reform of the British army, which was focused on lessening the emphasis placed on mounted units in combat.

[11] In 1904, during a crisis in British relations with Russia, he became the first member of a Cabinet since 1714 to attend a meeting of the Privy Council without being summoned to it by the monarch.

[12] At the general election of January 1906, the outcome of which was a Liberal win (the biggest landside except for that of the 1931 National Government's Conservatives), he lost his Parliamentary seat, at Guildford, which he had held since 1885.

Many Irish followers and sympathisers saw him as remote or condescending, reliant on a few intimates and suspected he was more interested in promotion in British politics.

In 1916 Midleton's lobbying helped to defeat an attempt to implement immediate Home Rule with Ulster exclusion; this was supported by the Ulster leader Edward Carson and the Home Ruler John Redmond, but Midleton believed it would be disastrous for the Southern Unionist minority, and called attention to the need to protect them from discriminatory taxation.

[17] In 1918, during the second, final year of his service on the Irish Convention,[citation needed] he tried to reach a compromise with Redmond which would allow Home Rule without partition subject to certain financial restrictions.

It had some influence on the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, but none of the safeguards for Southern Unionist interests which it sought were included in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.

[24] Madeleine Stanley′s mother had re-married the lawyer Sir Francis Jeune (later Baron St Helier), and her sister was married to the Conservative MP Augustus Henry Eden Allhusen.

By this second marriage he had two sons: His grandson Sir Julian St. John Loyd (by Lady Moyra) became land agent to Queen Elizabeth II at Sandringham.

Edith later Mrs. Lyttleton Gell was a published author of at least 24 works, such as The Cloud of Witness: A daily sequence of great thoughts from many minds and an autobiography, Under Three Reigns: 1860–1944.