Name Index

To

Address of the President, 23 July, 1912.

Trans. Devon Assoc., vol. 44, (1912). pp. 44-68.

by

The Right Hon. The Viscount St. Cyres, M.A., J.P.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The Association’s Jubilee Presidential Address was presented at its July, 1912 Exeter meeting. The President for this milestone event was Stafford Harry Northcote, Viscount Saint Cyres, KStJ (29 August 1869 – 2 February 1926) who was both diplomat and historian. The only son of Walter Stafford Northcote, 2nd Earl of Iddesleigh and Elizabeth Lucy Meysey-Thompson, he was styled as Viscount Saint Cyres from 1887 until his death. He was educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, where he graduated BA with a First in modern history and later MA. He was Secretary and Counsellor in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service and was also active as a historian. Viscount Northcote is quoted in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (Yale, 2012): “We do not care for things once they are ours; what we enjoy is running after them”. In his address Viscount Northcote displays an extraordinary panoply of Devon’s famous names, in an account of the lives of a number of "Devonshire Legal Worthies" and various other eminent Devonians, such as Sir Thomas Bodley of Exeter (who founded the Bodleian Library), William Cookworthy of Kingsbridge "founder of the English method of making porcelain", John Gay of Barnstaple (author of "Beggar's Opera") and Bampfield Moore Carew of Bickleigh near Tiverton (the self-styled "King of the Beggars"). The address can be found in a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal that can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.