In 1998 Strathclyde, along with the entire Conservative front bench in the House of Lords, threatened to tender his resignation if the party refused to accept a proposed compromise plan for reform of the Lords that had been negotiated by Lord Cranborne, Conservative leader in the Lords, to the disapproval of party leader William Hague.

In 1866 Lord Robert, now Viscount Cranborne after the death of his older brother, Cranborne entered the third government of Lord Derby as Secretary of State for India.

Cranborne studied Baxter's statistics and on 21 February he met Lord Carnarvon, who wrote in his diary: " He is firmly convinced now that Disraeli has played us false, that he is attempting to hustle us into his measure, that Lord Derby is in his hands and that the present form which the question has now assumed has been long planned by him ".

Cranborne also wrote to Derby arguing that he should adopt 10 shillings rather than Disraeli's 20 shillings for the qualification of the payers of direct taxation: " Now above 10 shillings you won't get in the large mass of the £ 20 householders.

Cranborne wrote to Derby that he had discovered that Disraeli's plan would " throw the small boroughs almost, and many of them entirely, into the hands of the voter whose qualification is less than £ 10.

" Cranborne got up at the same time, with Peel remarking: " Lord Cranborne, do you hear what Lord Derby says?

In his article for the October Quarterly Review, entitled ‘ The Conservative Surrender ’, Cranborne criticised Derby because he had " obtained the votes which placed him in office on the faith of opinions which, to keep office, he immediately repudiated ... He made up his mind to desert these opinions at the very moment he was being raised to power as their champion ".

Later that year, he resigned ( along with Lord Cranborne and Jonathan Peel ) in protest against Benjamin Disraeli's Reform Bill to enfranchise the working classes.

The Dorset Cursus, the longest known example, crosses a river and three valleys along its course across Cranborne Chase and is close to the henge monuments at Knowlton.

Gussage is a series of three villages in north Dorset, England, situated along a tributary of the River Allen on Cranborne Chase, eight miles north east of Blandford Forum and 10 miles north of Wimborne.

This act was unpopular with the right wing of the Conservative Party, most notably Lord Cranborne ( later the Marquess of Salisbury ), who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of " a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals.

" was quoted with regard to Lord Cranborne, a contemporary member of the Cecil family who, in 1998, was dismissed from his Conservative Party office in the House of Lords for conducting unauthorised negotiations with the Labour government.

An example of the many expressions of indignation came from Lord Cranborne, the British Under-Secretary of State For Foreign Affairs: Words cannot express the feelings of profound horror with which the news of these raids had been received by the whole civilized world.

When in 1867 John Stuart Mill proposed a type of proportional representation, Cranborne argued that: " It was not of our atmosphere — it was not in accordance with our habits ; it did not belong to us.

The famine left Cranborne with a lifelong suspicion of experts and in the photograph albums at his home covering the years 1866 – 67 there are two images of skeletal Indian children amongst the family pictures.

When Cranborne entered the Cabinet meeting on 25 February " with reams of paper in his hands " he begun by reading statistics but was interrupted to be told of the proposal by Lord Stanley that they should agree to a £ 6 borough rating franchise instead of the full household suffrage, and a £ 20 county franchise rather than £ 50.

The next day another Cabinet meeting took place, with Cranborne saying little and the Cabinet adopting Disraeli's proposal to bring in a Bill in a week's time.

At the Cabinet meeting on 2 March, Cranborne, Carnarvon and General Peel were pleaded with for two hours to not resign but when Cranborne " announced his intention of resigning ... Peel and Carnarvon, with evident reluctance, followed his example ".

Cranborne observed how the Bill " bristled with precautions, guarantees and securities " had been stripped of these.

" Mr Hague's remarks backfired when Blair revealed that the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, rather than oppose his reforms, would definitely support them, and that he had done a secret deal with the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, Viscount Cranborne.

Lord Addison and Lord Salisbury ( then Lord Cranborne ), the Conservative leader in the House of Lords from 1942 to 1957, both with memories of the troubles leading to the passing of the Parliament Act 1911, they agreed that anything promised in a party's manifesto would eventually pass ; anything else would be subject to full debate.

When the new Prime Minister Tony Blair proposed the removal of the hereditary element in the House of Lords, Lord Cranborne negotiated a pact with the government to retain a small number ( later set at ninety-two ) of hereditary peers for the interim period.

On the east the Downs were once, thousands of years ago, continuous with Cranborne Chase, but the River Stour now cuts a valley between them, which is the location of Blandford Forum and the eastern boundary of the downs.

The site, on the dip slope of Cranborne Chase, is now part of the Kingston Lacy estate owned by the National Trust, with free access.

A large defensive ditch on Cranborne Chase in the north east of the county, Bokerley Dyke, dated to 367, delayed the Saxon conquest of Dorset, with the Romano-British remaining in Dorset for 200 years after the withdrawal of the Roman legions.

When parliamentary reform came to prominence again in the mid-1860s, Cranborne worked hard to master electoral statistics until he became an expert.

That same night Cranborne spent three hours studying Baxter's statistics and wrote to Carnarvon the day after that although Baxter was right overall in claiming that 30 % of £ 10 ratepayers who qualified for the vote would not register, it would be untrue in relation to the smaller boroughs where the register is kept up to date.

On 23 February Cranborne protested in Cabinet and the next day analysed Baxter's figures using census returns and other statistics to determine how Disraeli's planned extension of the franchise would affect subsequent elections.

The Weatherill Amendment put into place the deal agreed to by the Prime Minister and Viscount Cranborne, and allowed ninety-two hereditary peers to remain members of the House of Lords.

Although officially Ireland declared itself neutral it can be disputed whether it was a non-belligerent or not, per the The Cranborne Report drew up by the Viscount Cranborne to the British War Cabinet regarding Irish-British collaboration.

" Cranborne, however, was unable to lead a rebellion similar to that which Disraeli had led against Peel twenty years earlier.

Utilising the Blue Books, Cranborne criticised officials for " walking in a dream … in superb unconsciousness, believing that what had been must be, and that as long as they did nothing absolutely wrong, and they did not displease their immediate superiors, they had fulfilled all the duties of their station ".

Cranborne found that Baxter had not taken into account the different types of boroughs in the totals of new voters.

These " fancy franchises ", as Cranborne had foreseen, did not survive the Bill's course through Parliament ; dual voting was dropped in March, the compound householder vote in April ; and the residential qualification was reduced in May.

Hague accepted the proposals, though Cranborne was dismissed for the way in which they had been negotiated, and Strathclyde was appointed to succeed him.

Hague then sacked Lord Cranborne, who accepted his error, saying that he had " rushed in, like an ill-trained spaniel ".

Lord Cranborne, who had received the title Baron Gascoyne-Cecil, of Essendon in the County of Rutland, remained active on the backbenches, until the House adopted new rules for declaration of financial interests which he believed were too onerous.

During the 1970s, Lord and Lady Cranborne had two sons and three daughters ( including twins ), of whom the two elder daughters are married.

although it has been attributed to the mason, William Arnold, who was responsible for the designs of Cranborne Manor and Wadham College, Oxford, and had worked at Dunster Castle, also in Somerset.

The downs are named after the village Cranborne, founded by the Saxons, which had a manor house and a small monastery.

From left to right: The King, Henry Howard, 13th Duke of Norfolk | Earl of Surrey, Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington | Marquess of Douro, James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury | Viscount Cranborne, George Pratt, 2nd Marquess Camden | Earl of Brecnock, Henry Paget, 2nd Marquess of Anglesey | Earl of Uxbridge, George Cholmondeley, 2nd Marquess of Cholmondeley | Earl of Rocksavage, George Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Marquess of Hastings | Earl of Rawdon, Henry Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury | Viscount Ingestre and Francis Conyngham, 2nd Marquess Conyngham | Lord Francis Conyngham.