7th Baron Sudeley

[Brian Coleman]

The Daily Telegraph web site carries an obit to the 7th Baron Sudeley very active in right wing circles . 

[sven_me...@web.de]

Once again a  former member of the Lords who lost his seat in 1999. Still many left

[gorgo...@gmail.com]

Dear members of this group,
If you are unable or don't want to add at least full name and death date to your post, please, wait for Richard R or colinp's post with all relevant information.

Lord Sudeley, peer who courted controversy with his fondness for reactionary causes – obituary

The 7th Lord Sudeley, who has died aged 83, was a perennially be-tweeded Conservative hereditary peer who, in championing an array of unfashionable and reactionary causes, notably slavery and the assassins of Thomas Becket, appeared to conform to a Wodehousian caricature.
But he was earnest about his uncompromising approach to public affairs. His list of attachments gave a flavour of his politics: 17 years as chairman and president of the Right-wing Monday Club; president of the far-right group Traditional Britain; vice-chancellor of the Monarchist League; chairman of the Constitutional Monarchy Association; and patron of the Prayer Book Society.

Bankruptcy was a special interest. Sudeley was patron of the Bankruptcy Association – a concern motivated by a sense of injustice over the treatment of the 4th Lord Sudeley, who was foreclosed upon by Lloyds Bank in 1893, forcing the sale of the family seat, Toddington in Gloucestershire.

...Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy was born on June 17 1939 and became the 7th Lord Sudeley in 1941 at the age of two, succeeding his first cousin. He was not permitted to take his seat until he was 21.

He was educated at Eton, going on to read History at Worcester College, Oxford. While at university he declined an offer to take up a position teaching King Hassan II of Morocco how to hunt, swim and shoot – instead continuing with his studies.

...Sudeley was thrice married, but had no children. He married first, in 1980, Elizabeth Villiers; the marriage was dissolved in 1988 and she died in 2014. His second wedding, in July 1999, to Margarita Kellett, at the Sudeley family chapel at Toddington, saw Sudeley, in his heavy clothing, waiting for an hour and half in the heat. His Russian bride’s beautician had been delayed. He is survived by his third wife, Tatiana Dudina, a philologist whom he married in 2010.

The 7th Lord Sudeley, born June 17 1939, died September 5 2022
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2022/09/07/lord-sudeley-peer-who-courted-controversy-fondness-reactionary/

He was a son of Michael David Charles Hanbury-Tracy and Colline Amabel St. Hill, daughter of Lt.-Col. Collis George Herbert St. Hill.

[marquess]

I agree with Gorgo, the date should have been included in the topic line of his post, so to help anyone searching this group. It can't be hard to post 7th Baron Sudeley 1939-2022

[bx...@yahoo.com]

Debrett's Online Database has yet to update this page.  

However, according to it, it appears the new (8th) Baron is Nicholas Edward John HANBURY-TRACY (b. 1959), the son of the late Desmond Andrew John HANBURY-TRACY (1928-2013).  This line descends from the 5th son of the 2nd Baron.

The new heir presumptive is Timothy Christopher Claud HANBURY-TRACY (b. 1968), a half brother of the late Desmond.  Timothy has a son, Maximilian  John Claud (b. 2004), so it looks as if the title is secure for the foreseeable future.

Brooke

[colinp]

DPB online now updated

[Richard R]

Obit from the Times of 21 Sept 2022:

E X T R A C T

Lord Sudeley obituary
Relentlessly controversial, tweed-wearing peer who ran the Monday Club and described himself as being as far right as it’s possible to be
Merlin Sudeley’s reactionary views might have seemed harmlessly eccentric, to some. Yet to others they were dangerous, especially in a man who spent much of his adult life revising legislation as an unelected member of the House of Lords.
On the harmless front, Sudeley campaigned for the preservation of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. More dangerously he chaired the Monday Club, a pressure group that campaigns for the repatriation of ethnic minorities. “I’m a far-rightwinger,” he cheerfully revealed in a 1998 interview with The Observer. Pressed on how far to the right, he replied: “As far as it’s possible to be.”
...On another occasion he suggested that Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, was right about the Second World War and that the Americans used it “to take our empire”. As for the defeat of Nazi Germany, he added: “There’s no doubt the Jews were getting a rough time under Hitler but what was that to do with us?” Yet another of his interventions was to query the value of educating the working class, though he later said that his remarks were “just a joke in a speech about literacy”...
...He claimed that the abolition of slavery had cost his family, who owned sugar plantations in Jamaica, a great deal of money. “What improvement was there in the condition of the slaves? I don’t think there was much. How’s anyone better off?” he ventured. “If someone’s owned by someone, it’s in the interests of the owner to look after his property, that is, the slave. Under the liberal dogma of free contract, they have no interest in looking after them.”...
...Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy was born in 1939, the only child of Michael Hanbury-Tracy, an officer in the Scots Guards who died from his wounds after the Battle of Dunkirk, and his wife, Colline King (née St Hill). He was two when he succeeded the sixth Lord Sudeley, his first cousin once removed, who had been killed at sea on active service. “I can’t remember being a commoner,” he said, though he was unable to take his seat in the Lords until the age of 21.
He claimed to be a descendant of William de Tracy, the knight who first struck Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170, on the orders of Henry II. Yet he insisted that his ancestor was guilty of manslaughter rather than murder, claiming that the knights were “thrown off their balance by the archbishop’s resistance and the presence of a hostile crowd in Canterbury Cathedral”.
By his own account his family had been accumulating titles since the time of Edward the Confessor (1003-66). The first peerage was the earldom of Hereford, though there was “a bit of a muddle” about this because there is no evidence in the Domesday Book that his ancestors owned land in Herefordshire. Later they picked up an Irish peerage from Charles I but turned down a title from George III on account of being Whigs...
...On receiving the news [his cr in 1838 the 1st baron] is said to have spun round on his foot like a spinning top, exclaiming: “How happy I am!” Through marriage to his cousin Henrietta Tracy, whose surname the first baron added to his own, he acquired the Toddington estate in Gloucestershire and designed its gothic manor house...
[The 7th Baron] was especially aggrieved by the loss of Toddington, which in 2005 was bought by the artist Damien Hirst and since then has spent time shrouded in scaffolding and sheeting. Deprived of a country seat, Sudeley had to make do with a flat in Dorset Square...
...Having taken his seat in the Lords, it took eight years for him to make his maiden speech [which] was to defend the hereditary peerage... insisting that “an attack on the hereditary principle is an attack on the family”. Thereafter he spoke only occasionally but was proud of the subtle influence of his questions, one of which, he claimed, secured an invitation for the dethroned King of Romania to the VE Day 50th anniversary celebrations in 1995...
...In 1980 he married Elizabeth Villiers, the daughter of Viscount Bury. That was dissolved and in 1999 he married Margarita Kellett, the daughter of the seventh Marquess of Londonderry... That too was dissolved and in 2010 he married Tatiana Dudina, a Russian philologist, who survives him. According to the Evening Standard, she worked for the KGB before becoming a British subject in 2008. It was said that at Brooks’s Club “she achieved what no nanny, wife or mistress ever managed: she made him eat his greens”. At one time he was also romantically linked to Anne Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell, the newspaper proprietor and Labour MP. Sudeley had no direct heir and the title passes to a distant relative...
After Tony Blair’s reforms to the Lords in 1999, Sudeley was not one of the 92 hereditary peers elected to the chamber, though he stood unsuccessfully at various by-elections to replace peers as they died...
The 7th Lord Sudeley was born on June 17, 1939. He died of undisclosed causes on September 5, 2022, aged 83
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lord-sudeley-obituary-bm6dxd8tv

[JonnyK]

Bit of a boob in the Times obituary, Elizabeth Villiers was a granddaughter of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, second wife Margarita Kellett is no relation to the Londonderrys as far as I'm aware

[colinp]

The Secretary of State for Justice has approved the succession of Nicholas Hanbury-Tracy as Baron Sudeley in the Peerage of the United Kingdom - College of Arms website