Earl of Ellesmere and James Charles Hale

Born in London on 5 April 1847, Francis Charles Granville Egerton was the eldest son of George Egerton, 2nd Earl of Ellesmere. He attended Eton, initially as Viscount Brackley until he succeeded to his estates and title on the death of his father in 1862, before going up to Trinity in the Michaelmas term of 1865, where he graduated BA in 1868. He rose to the rank of Captain in the service of the Duke of Lancester’s Own Yeomanry. In 1891 he received command of the regiment. That same year he became Honorary Colonel of the 4th Volunteer Battalion of the Manchester Regiment.

On 9 December 1868, he married Lady Katherine Louisa Phipps, second daughter of George Phipps, 2nd Marquess of Normanby. Their marriage produced eleven children.

Lord Ellesmere died at Bridgewater House, St James’s, on 13 July 1914, leaving an estate valued at £250,000.

The other man in the portrait, identified recto in the lower margin as ‘C. Hale,’ is probably James Charles Hale, who went up to Trinity in the Michaelmas term of 1863. Born on 28 August 1840, he was the youngest son of William Hale Hale, Archdeacon of London. Like his father, he followed a career in the Church and was ordained in 1867. On 21 September 1871 at Horton Kirby in Kent he married Mary Georgina Rashleigh, daughter of Henry Burville Rashleigh, the Curate of Horton Kirby.

Reverend James Charles Hale died, aged only 38, at Castle Camps, a village in Cambridgeshire where he was the Rector, on 22 December 1878.

Photographed by the Farren Brothers of Cambridge.