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 abundant means, and enjoyed offering hospitality to his acquaintances. From 1879 to 1889 his London residence was 2 Orme Square, Bayswater; from 1889 to 1908, 48 Grosvenor Square; and in 1905 he bought Brook House, Park Lane, to which he moved in 1908. He purchased the estates of Moulton Paddocks, Newmarket (1899, adding thereto in 1908, 1914, and 1920); Six Mile Bottom, Cambridge (1912); Branksome Dene, Bournemouth (1913); and Upper Hare Park, Cambridge (1917). He was a collector of old masters, old French and English furniture and objets d’art, including valuable examples of Renaissance bronzes, Dresden china, and Chinese jades. His pictures comprised important works by Van Dyck, Franz Hals, Romney, Raeburn, Reynolds, and Murillo. Among his fine collection of old English silver were such unique historical pieces as the ‘Bacon cup’ of 1573-1574 and the ‘Blacksmith’s cup’ of 1655-1656. From early life he was a fearless rider and devoted to hunting, and his interest in horses resulted, in 1889, in his forming a stud for breeding, jointly with Lord Willoughby de Broke. This arrangement continued till 1894, when the partnership ceased and Cassel carried on the stud on his own account. Among the chief stallions owned by him were ‘Cylgad’ and ‘Hapsburg’, and among his chief mares ‘Gadfly’, ‘Sonatura’, and ‘Doctrine’. In 1896 he began racing his own horses, and in later years had a fair number of successes on the turf, though he got no nearer to winning the Derby than second with ‘Hapsburg’ in 1914.

It was at race-meetings that he became acquainted with King Edward VII, then still Prince of Wales, and a close friendship was formed. The King, both before and after he came to the throne, held Cassel in high esteem, readily accepting his hospitality and enjoying his society at Newmarket and elsewhere, while Cassel admired and respected his royal friend, to whom in personal appearance he bore a noticeable resemblance. Some of the greatest of Cassel’s public benefactions were made in honour of, or in memory of, King Edward. Contemporary gossip credited Cassel with loans or gifts of money to the King. There was no foundation for any such legends; what is true is that the King most sensibly sought, and availed himself of, Cassel’s opinion about his own private money matters, and he could not have gone to a sounder or a more straightforward adviser.

Shortly after the outbreak of the European War in 1914, when anti-German feeling was acute in England, an agitation was set on foot by extremists, who were blind to Cassel’s unsullied British patriotism, to have his name removed from the Privy Council; but they were deservedly frustrated. He was in fact a most valuable counsellor to the government on the financial problems arising out of the crisis; he was one of the largest individual subscribers to the successive war loans, and in September 1915 he went over to New York specially in order to use his influence there in support of the issue of the Anglo-French loan in America. Cassel died at Brook House 21 September 1921, and was buried according to the rites of the Church of Rome, at Kensal Green. His estate was proved at £7,551,608 (net personalty, £7,329,033).

As a public benefactor during his lifetime Cassel gave away altogether about £2,000,000. His most important charitable and philanthropic gifts were the following: In 1902 he gave £200,000 for founding the King Edward VII Sanatorium for Consumption, Midhurst; in 1903, £41,000 for the Egyptian Travelling Ophthalmic Hospital; in 1907, £10,000 for the Imperial College of Science and Technology; in 1909 and after, £46,000 as his half-share in founding (with Viscount Iveagh) the Radium Institute; in 1911, £210,000 for creating the King Edward VII British-German Foundation (half for relief of distressed English in Germany, and half for distressed Germans in England); £30,000 for the benefit of workmen at Kizuna and Malmberget mines in Sweden, and £50,000 (in memory of his daughter, Mrs. Ashley) to hospitals and King Edward’s Hospital Fund; in 1912, £10,000 for the Deaconesses’ Hospital, Alexandria;. in 1913, a further £20,000 for the King Edward Sanatorium, and £50,000 for relief of sick and needy in Cologne; during the war years, £114,000 to the Red Cross, £48,000 to hospitals, £12,000 for a convalescent home for officers at Sandacres, and £222,000 in donations to the National Relief Fund, Officers’ Families Fund, Salvation Army, Church Army, Young Men’s Christian Association, &c.; in 1919, £472,000 (in securities of £500,000 face value) for creating an educational trust, to be applied by the trustees (Viscount Haldane, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, the Earl of Balfour, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, Sir George H. Murray, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Miss Fawcett) to objects generally indicated in the  99