Background
Hothfield was the son of Sir Richard Tufton, 1st Baronet, and his wife Adelaide Amelie Lacour.
Liberal politician Lord Lieutenant
Hothfield was the son of Sir Richard Tufton, 1st Baronet, and his wife Adelaide Amelie Lacour.
His father was the reputed natural son of Henry Tufton, 11th and last Earl of Thanet, and had succeeded to the Tufton estates on the death of the Earl in 1849. Hothfield succeeded his father as second Baronet in 1871 and in 1881 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Hothfield, of Hothfield in the County of Kent. The same year he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Westmorland, a post he held until 1926.
In 1886 he also served briefly as a Lord-in-Waiting (government whip in the House of Lords) in the Liberal administration of William Ewart Gladstone.
He was also a prominent breeder and owner of racehorses. Lord Hothfield married Alice Harriet, daughter of Reverend William James Stracy-Clitherow, in 1872.
Lady Hothfield died in 1914.