Lord Redesdale never again held any office, though Mr. Perceval wished him to return to the Chancellorship of Ireland. He knew how unpopular he was in that country, and wisely declined. He preferred his independence, and became a very useful and much consulted member of the House of Lords. Lady Redesdale died in 1817, and Lord Redesdale thirteen years later at the age of eighty-one. The second Lord Redesdale, who was educated at Eton and at New College, Oxford, speedily made his mark in the House of Lords by his diligence and capacity for business. The Duke of Wellington appointed him to be his Whip, and encouraged him to master all the details of the procedure and private business of the House with a view to his becoming Chairman of Committees, an office for which on the death of Lord Shaftesbury in February, 1851, he was chosen unanimously and which he held until his death in 1886. He was a keen sportsman, master and owner of the Heythrop hounds, which post he resigned when he found public business increasingly making inroads upon his time, but though he ceased to be master, the hounds remained his property until Mr. Albert Brassey, who had recently become master, made overtures to him to buy them. At first Lord Redesdale refused, but eventually yielded, and gave the purchase money, £2,000, to the hunt as an endowment. He was a good shot, though he very rarely went out with a gun; gave great attention to local affairs, never missing the sittings of the Board of Guardians. “Give old Pensioner (his hack) his head,” said his studgroom, “and he’ll go straight to Shipston.[14]” He continued to hunt so long as he was able and always hacked to covert, no matter what the distance might be. No man was more looked up to, and I don’t believe that he had an enemy in the world, unless it might be among certain Parliamentary agents and promoters over whose proceedings he kept so strict a watch that he earned the name of the Lord Dictator. It was mainly owing to his determined action that the attempt to abolish the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords fell through. His literary controversy with Cardinal Manning on the Infallible Church and the Holy Communion is still remembered by ecclesiastics. He wrote several pamphlets, chiefly on doctrinal or genealogical subjects, in which his arguments were always ingenious and well expressed. In 1877 he was created an Earl by Queen Victoria on the recommendation of Lord Beaconsfield.