Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby

Stanley was born at 23 St James's Square, London, the eldest son of Hon. Frederick Stanley (later the 16th Earl of Derby) by his wife, Lady Constance Villiers. Frederick Stanley was the second son of Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, who was three times Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Villiers was the daughter of the Liberal statesman George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon. Edward Stanley was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, where he boarded as a pupil of Stanley House, named in honour of his paternal grandfather the 14th Earl.

Stanley initially received a lieutenant's commission in a militia unit, the 3rd Battalion, King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) (commanded by his father), on 4 May 1882, and then joined the Grenadier Guards as a lieutenant from 6 May 1885. He was seconded as aide-de-camp to the Governor General of Canada, his father, between 8 August 1889 and 1891. He was again seconded from his regiment on 10 July 1892, to take his seat in the House of Commons. He resigned his commission on 3 April 1895.

On 11 January 1899, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the reserve of officers, and on 17 May, was made honorary colonel of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. Lord Stanley served on the staff in the Second Boer War, and was appointed Chief Press Censor at Cape Town, graded as assistant adjutant-general, on 18 January 1900. He accompanied Lord Roberts's headquarters as Press Censor when he left Cape Town, and was mentioned in despatches of 31 March 1900 by Roberts for his "tact and discretion" in that role. He was appointed Roberts' private secretary on 25 July 1900. and was again mentioned in despatches of 2 April 1901 for his "thorough knowledge of men and affairs". He was appointed honorary colonel of the 6th (Militia) Battalion, Manchester Regiment on 24 December 1902, of the 5th Battalion, King's Regiment (Liverpool) in the Territorial Force (TF) on 15 June 1908 (the fourth successive Earl of Derby to hold the appointment), of the 4th and 5th TF Battalions of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment on 18 June 1909 and 17 May 1899 respectively, and of the Lancashire and Cheshire Heavy Brigade, Royal Artillery on 26 February 1921.

Lord Derby married Lady Alice Montagu, daughter of William Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester, and Louisa von Alten, and step-daughter of the leading Liberal politician Lord Hartington, at the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, London, on 5 January 1889. Lady Alice was also a lady-in-waiting to her friend, Queen Alexandra.

The couple had three children together:

Lady Victoria Alice Louisa (24 June 1892 – 26 November 1927); married firstly in 1915 Liberal politician Neil Primrose (1882–1917); married secondly in 1919 the Conservative politician Malcolm Bullock.

Edward, Lord Stanley (1894–1938), father of John Stanley, 18th Earl of Derby

Hon. Oliver Stanley (4 May 1896 – 10 December 1950), married in 1920 Lady Maureen Vane-Tempest-Stewart, daughter of 7th Marquess of Londonderry and the Hon. Edith Chaplin

Their two sons achieved the rare distinction of sitting in the same Cabinet between May and October 1938 until Edward's death. Their only daughter, Lady Victoria, died aged 35, from a fractured skull sustained in a horse-riding accident caused by striking her head on a low iron railway arch.

Lord Derby died in February 1948 at the family seat of Knowsley Hall, Lancashire, aged 82. His other country seat was Coworth Park at Sunningdale in Berkshire. He was succeeded in the earldom by his grandson, Edward. He is buried at St Mary's Church, Knowsley. The Countess of Derby died in July 1957.

Derby entered Parliament for Westhoughton in 1892, and served under Lord Salisbury as a Lord of the Treasury between 1895 and 1900 and under Salisbury and later Arthur Balfour as Financial Secretary to the War Office between 1901 and 1903. In October 1903 he entered the cabinet as Postmaster General, a post he held until the government fell in December 1905. He lost his seat in the 1906 general election. In 1908 he succeeded his father in the earldom and took his seat in the House of Lords.

In August 1914, Lord Derby organised one of the most successful recruitment campaigns to Kitchener's Army in Liverpool. Over two days, 1,500 Liverpudlians joined the new battalion. Speaking to the men, he said: "This should be a battalion of pals, a battalion in which friends from the same office will fight shoulder to shoulder for the honour of Britain and the credit of Liverpool." Within the next few days, three more pals battalions were raised in Liverpool. In October 1915, as Director-General of Recruiting, he instituted the Derby Scheme, a halfway house between voluntary enlistment and conscription (which the Government was reluctant to adopt). It was not sufficiently successful in spite of the fact that the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell by the Germans on 12 October 1915 was used in recruitment rallies and conscription followed in 1916.

In July 1916 Derby returned to the government when he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for War by H. H. Asquith, and in December 1916 he was promoted to Secretary of State for War by David Lloyd George. In this position he was a strong supporter of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir William Robertson and of the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, Field Marshal Haig. Haig privately had little respect for him, writing to his wife (10 January 1918) that Derby was "like the feather pillow, bear[ing] the mark of the last person who sat on him" and remarking that he was known in London as the "genial Judas". Robertson's biographer writes that during the crisis over Robertson's removal Derby "made himself ridiculous" by asking everyone, including the King, whether or not he should resign, and then in the end not doing so, only to be removed from the War Office a few weeks later.

Derby and John Joseph Woodward (who was also secretary) jointly founded the ex-servicemen's organisation, the Comrades of the Great War in 1917 as a right-wing alternative to the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers (NADSS) and the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers (NFDSS), the latter of whom had put a candidate up against his son Lord Stanley in the 1917 Liverpool Abercromby by-election. The rival groups later merged into the British Legion formed in 1921.

In April 1918 he was made Ambassador to France, which he remained until 1920. In April 1921 he was sent secretly to Ireland for talks with Éamon de Valera, and it is likely that these talks paved the way for the truce which in turn led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Clementine Churchill wrote of Derby to her husband Winston Churchill (3 February 1922) “People think he is bluff & independent & honest & John Bullish but he is really a fat sneak”.

He again served as Secretary of State for War under the Conservative governments of Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin from 1922 to 1924.