fine symbol of their own race, a sportsman and a “Sahib,” and a political leader among the governing classes who owned the land... He was one of the last, almost the last, of the fox-hunting country gentlemen who also wielded political influence... [N]o one was half such a country gentleman as Henry Chaplin looked... He possessed a strongly marked individuality, easily recognisable, familiar to the public. Every one knew him by sight. Willoughby de Broke recalled an occasion before the First World War when he helped Chaplin judge Lord Lonsdale's young foxhounds; after luncheon, Chaplin rose to reply to the toast of "The Judges", when all the puppy-walkers got up and sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow": [They] cheered him and cheered him again and again before he was allowed to speak. There he was. He was “The Squire.” He was their own Harry Chaplin, who loved the soil and the horses and the bullocks and the hounds and the hunting. He was part of them, and they were part of him; they knew how he loved agriculture, and how he hated “Dicky Cobden” and all his works, and they just took him to their hearts. In her biography of Chaplin, his daughter Edith said he was "of no outstanding brilliance, he owed his power to his fixed sincerity of purpose", and concluded: [H]e was a representative—almost the last representative—of that type of landed gentry whose political and social influence had meant so much to Victorian England. He belonged essentially to that old school of country gentlemen to whom a long line of squires had bequeathed a tradition of responsibility to their country no less than to their acres. ... He was a representative of an elder England, which changes in little things but continues unchanged in the greater matters of policy and conduct—the essential England of good sense, generosity, humour, and faithful service. Agriculture Known as the "Squire of Blankney", Chaplin took an active interest in agricultural questions, as a popular and typical representative of the English "country gentleman" class. However, mounting debts forced him to sell the family seat of Blankney Hall to Lord Londesborough in 1887. Family In 1876 Chaplin married Lady Florence, daughter of George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke of Sutherland, who had survived the Wigan rail crash of 1873. They had one son, Eric, and two daughters, Edith and Florence. Lady Florence died in childbirth