Charles Clements, 5th Earl of Leitrim.

About Charles Clements, 5th Earl of Leitrim

Charles Clements, 5th Earl of Leitrim, styled Viscount Clements until 1892, was an Irish nobleman and Unionist. He was commissioned into the British Army after college, and served in the Second Boer War, during which he was made a prisoner of war in the debacle at Lindley, Free State. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of the City of Londonderry in 1904, shortly after the close of the war. During the Home Rule crisis, he commanded the Ulster Volunteers in County Donegal and smuggled arms into the country for their use. He held a commission in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers during World War I, recruiting Volunteers into the regiment, and served as Private Secretary to fellow-Unionist Walter Hume Long, Secretary of State for the Colonies. The Earl had no children by either of his two marriages; his only heir, his brother Francis, went to America under an assumed name, disappeared, and was pronounced dead in 1917. Accordingly, Leitrim's titles became extinct on his death in 1952.