The affray at Mitchelstown in the September of 1887 was dealt with by Mr. Balfour with his usual splendid disregard for public opinion, and it was succeeded by the Parnell Commission. During these historic incidents the viceroy remained in the background, jogging amiably along, and no doubt thanking Heaven that had cast his lot in pleasanter times than those that fell to Lord Cowper and Lord Spencer. He resigned the office in 1889. Eleven years later he sat in his first Cabinet as Postmaster-General, and when Mr. Balfour succeeded his uncle in the premiership he appointed his colleague President of the Board of Education--a nice, respectable post that nobody took seriously, and wondered why it was represented in the Cabinet at all. The 'tariff' resignations in 1903 placed several important portfolios at Mr. Balfour's disposal, and he thereupon added to Lord Londonderry's official duties by making him Lord President of the Council. And as President of the Board of Education and President of the Council the marquis continued to attend the Cabinet until the ministry perished in the {302} maelstrom that swallowed up the Tory party and astonished the world within a few weeks of Mr. Balfour's resignation of the premiership. The Tory ex-Prime Minister appeared to have left most of his courage behind him in Ireland, where he went as 'Clara,' and stayed to earn the more flattering, if inelegant, sobriquet of 'Tiger Lily.' {303} CHAPTER XX From out of the solid phalanx of Tory peers eligible for the post Lord Salisbury chose the Earl of Zetland, and sent him to Dublin. The viceroy was then in his forty-fifth year, was chiefly distinguished by his fondness for horse-racing, while a painstaking press recorded the fact that his mother was an Irishwoman. In 1871 he married Lady Lilian Lumley, a daughter of the ninth Earl of Scarborough, and the following year he was elected for the family borough of Richmond, Yorkshire. The death of his uncle in 1873 terminated his career in the House of Commons, and until his appointment to Ireland in 1889 he led the life of a country gentleman and a sportsman.