ABSTRACT
Local and central government in England naturally reflected the social dominance of a landed aristocracy: Local government, from county level down to the parishes, was subject to little control from Westminster. The county Lord-Lieutenant was head of the local militia, but the post was also coveted because it symbolized social leadership. Lord-Lieutenants were usually the great magnates whose influence frequently spread across several counties. The second earl of Egremont was Lord-Lieutenant of Cumberland in the 1750s though he rarely visited his estates in the North-west; the third earl became Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex, where the main family holdings were situated. Family influence consolidated the major county appointments. While the duke of Portland was Lord-Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, his son, the marquis of Titchfield, occupied the post for Middlesex. That great political manipulator of the eighteenth century, Thomas Pelham HolIes, duke of Newcastle, held no fewer than three lordlieutenancies, those for Middlesex, Westminster and Nottinghamshire while his heir, Henry Clinton, effectively inherited Nottinghamshire having already held Cambridgeshire for more than twenty years.
