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An Original Hand Written Letter and Signed by Princess Beatrice Youngest Daughter of Queen Victoria Lord Cross. Princess Beatrice 1857-1944, autograph letter signed, ?Beatrice?, Kensington Palace, 8 February 1907, letter of condolences on the death of his wife, 2 pages, From an Archive of correspondence mostly addressed to Richard Assheton Cross 1st Viscount Cross, late 19th & early 20th century. Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, 1857-1944, later Princess Henry of Battenberg, was the fifth daughter and youngest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Beatrice was also the last of Queen Victoria's children to die, 66 years after the first, her elder sister Alice. Richard Assheton Cross, 1st Viscount Cross, (1823-1914), was born in Red Scar, near Preston, Lancashire. A lawyer and banker, Cross was a Conservative member of the House of Commons from 1857 to 1862 and from 1868 until 1886. In 1874 Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli appointed him home secretary. The Cross Act of 1875 empowered municipalities to buy and demolish slums and to build housing for rental. In the same year Cross carried through Parliament the Factory Act, regulating the employment of women and children in textile mills; the Public Health Act, a comprehensive sanitary code; and two statutes reinterpreting Gladstone?s trade-union legislation of 1871. Cross left office with Disraeli in 1880, served again as home secretary in the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury?s brief ministry of 1885-86, was created viscount in 1886, and held the secretaryship for India from that year until 1892. From 1895 to 1900 he was lord privy seal. In 1884, Cross was elected to the Board of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, and he remained a Director of that company, and of its successor the Great Central Railway (GCR), until his death. 'Cross was a fellow of the Royal Society, a bencher of the Inner Temple, and an ecclesiastical commissioner, and was keenly interested in the affairs of the church. His honours included, besides the viscountcy, the GCB (1880) and GCSI (1892). He was among the small band of her ministers to whom Queen Victoria gave her close personal friendship, and he was a trustee of more than one royal marriage settlement' . Cross may now be best remembered as one of the country's outstanding home secretaries but some of the material offered here, by direct descent from the family, reveals his close relationship with Queen Victoria. He is mentioned frequently in her journals from 1877 until 1900, often as a guest at the royal residences of Balmoral, Windsor and Osborne. Size is 177mm x 115mm. Condition is good. Folding crease. More images can be taken upon request. Ref17300. Seller Inventory # 025606
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