Vanity Fair article about the 3rd Earl Amherst

dated March 10, 1904

His house is as old as the thirteenth century; for, as Burke has it, Gilbertus de Hemmehurst "occurs" in Pipe Roll, in the year 1215, while Rogerus de Hemhurste happens in the Chartulary of Bayham Abbey in the time of the second, or third, Edward. Yet in the twenty-fifth year of Edward III, the name is recorded as de Amherst. Since then the family has included a Serjeant-at-Law, who was Serjeant to Queen Elizabeth, and other famous lawyers; a celebrated Field-Marshal, who was the first Baron Amherst; an Ambassador and Governor-General of India, who was the first Viscount; and several other more or less noted soldiers and sailors. Himself, William Archer Amherst, of Aracan, in the East Indies, third Earl Amherst, Viscount Holmesdale of Holmesdale in Kent, and Baron Amherst of Montreal in Kent, was born eight-and-sixty years ago, though he still looks quite young. He began life at Eton, and rea11ife in the Coldstream Guards; with whom he served in the Crimea, winning a glorious if severe wound and a thrice-clasped medal at Inkerman. Since then he has been an Officer of Volunteers, and is a Deputy-Lieutenant and a Justice of the Peace and other worthy things in Kent, which county he loves and has lived with all his life. He is also a Knight of Justice of St. John of Jerusalem ; and before he was summoned to the Upper House he served his county as a Member of Parliament for twenty-one years, representing first West Kent, and afterwards Mid-Kent; about eight thousand acres of which county he owns. Outside Kent he is known the world over as Pro-Grand Master of the English Freemasons; while he has been Grand Master of Kent for four-and-forty years, and with the double exception of Lord Leigh and the Duke of Devonshire, he is the oldest Provincial Grand Master in England. So popular and so good a Mason is he that his King, who was then Grand Master, appointed him to the Office of Deputy Grand Master of England eight years ago; and when the great figure of the late Lord Lathom disappeared from among us five years ago, he was promoted to the great Office which he now so worthily fills. In the discharge of his Masonic duties he combines much dignity and urbanity with that most useful quality, tact. He is also remarkable for great quickness of perception, as he has shown on many occasions of difficulty and doubt; so that he is altogether, and most rightly, popular in the craft. Outside Freemasonry he is a sportsman so keenly devoted to shooting, fishing, and golf that he spends a great part of the year in his shooting quarters in Sutherlandshire, while he has excellent golf links of his own in Kent.

He is altogether a worthy, upright, rather reserved man of much dignity.

JEHU JUNIOR.