LONSDALE, Rt Hon 8th Earl of 1949-2021

[Richard R]

From the Telegraph of 26 June 2021: LOWTHER Hugh, Earl of Lonsdale, peacefully at the Cumberland Infirmary on Tuesday 22nd June. Hugh aged 72 years, after a short illness. Private funeral. A thanksgiving service at a later date to be confirmed. Hugh will be missed by many.

He was s of 7th Earl of LONSDALE 1922-2006 and his 1st w Tuppina Cecily 1924-84 d of Capt Geoffrey Harbord BENNET 1894-(13 Jan) 1924 by his 13 July 1923 m reg Q3 London to (as her 1st h) Cecily Clayton 1896-1976 d of Col Robert Clayton SWAN 1864-1929 (Armiger) and his 1st w Mildred Mary 1871-1917 d of Sir George William ELLIOT 2nd Bt 1844-95. He m 1st 1971 Pamela Colleen d of John MIDDLETON of Stannington, Northumberland and she had a son by IVF (using sperm from a donor) Oliver b 1980 who is not in line to the title. He m 2nd 1986 Angela Mary d of Capt Peter J WYATT RN of Dartmouth (BP2003 p2396 col 1 says has a dau but does not name her nor does she appear in DPB). He m 3rd 1999 Elizabeth Margaret d of Stanley Frazer ARNISTON. He is succ by his half-brother.

[Rt Hon] William James LOWTHER [9th Earl of LONSDALE] b 9 July 1957, has yet to establish his claim and appear on The Peerage Roll, s of 7th Earl of LONSDALE and his 2nd w & 3rd cousin Hon Jennifer LOWTHER 1932-2021 (gd of 1st Viscount ULLSWATER 1855-1949). He m 1999 Angela Ann d of Arthur TINKER, no issue.

HALF-BROTHERS LIVING

(7th Earl's son by his 3rd w Nancy Ruth COBBS)
Hon JAMES NICHOLAS Lowther b 4 December 1964, heir presumptive, m 1994 Vanessa d of Alan CATCHPOLE of Nacton, Suffolk and has two sons and two daus.

(7th Earl's s by his 4th w Caroline Sheila d of Sir Gerald Gordon LEY 3rd Bt)
Hon Charles Alexander James LOWTHER b 27 Feb 1978, m 2011 Juno LEIGH and has a son and a dau.

[Ind_Duke]

If the IVF was done using the Earl's sperm, then could the son have been able to succeed?

[www.maltagenealogy.com]

According to Wikipedia "He has been married three times, firstly to Pamela Colleen Middleton, on 2 October 1971; secondly in 1986 to Angela Mary Wyatt,[1] and currently to his present wife, Elizabeth Nee Arnison. With his first wife (whom he divorced after 12 years of marriage, circa 1983/1984), he has one adopted son Oliver, born by artificial insemination, who thus does not stand in succession to his father's titles.[2] This page, on the website of the Hereditary Peerage Association (HPA), explains the procedure of entering one's name on the Peerage Roll without applying for the right to vote in by-elections for elected hereditary peers to the House of Lords".

Precedence set..

[marquess]

If he had been born using his father's sperm then he would have been in line. Unlike a surrogacy where the mother is other than the lawfully wedded wife? This is the case with the current marquis of Bath's second son. Though I believe that if there was succession dispute, the matter would be tested in court.

[Ind_Duke]

Even in case of surrogacy, if the ovum is from the legal mother and the surrogate acts only as a medium for growth of the baby, then surely the baby can be eligible for succession?

[Richard R]

Obit in the Times of 2 July 2021:
E X T R A C T
The 8th Earl of Lonsdale obituary
Landowner turned lorry driver who inherited vast tracts of the Lake District and tried to sell one of his mountains for £1.7m
Hugh Lowther was facing a £9 million inheritance tax bill. “We went through the pictures and furniture first,” he told a reporter in 2014... “We sold a Turner for £1.4 million, a derelict farm steading and a couple of cottages which were vacant,” he added. “And now Blencathra.”
Parting with the 868-metre Lake District peak, also known as Saddleback, was more than just flogging off an old painting or a few buildings. It had been in the family for almost 400 years, reward for their doughty support of the royalist cause...the 2,676-acre plot came with grazing rights [...] and the lordship of the manor of Threlkeld, one of dozens of manorial titles in the family, though none would bring a freeholder any financial gain....
...Hugh Clayton Lowther was born in 1949, the eldest son of the 7th Earl of Lonsdale, a landowner who was mentioned in dispatches for his part in the Normandy landings, and his first wife, Tuppina (née Bennet); he has an older sister, Jane, and six half-siblings scattered across his father’s next three marriages. His father often entertained the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, with the duke competing in the annual Lowther horse carriage driving trials in the vast grounds of Lowther Castle...
...The earldom was first created in 1784 for “Wicked Jimmy” Lowther, a former MP. The most colourful Lonsdale earl was another Hugh, the 5th Earl of Lonsdale (1857-1944), a sportsman who founded the Automobile Association and donated the original Lonsdale belt for boxing. He was known as the “yellow earl” on account of his fondness for a fleet of yellow cars, a regiment of yellow-liveried servants and a greenhouse to grow yellow gardenias for his buttonhole... The yellow earl lived extravagantly, socialising with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and conducting a string of affairs with actresses...
...He succeeded in the earldom in 2006, soon discovering that his father had “scratched an illegible mark” on legal documents the day before he died, leaving him effectively disinherited save for a pocket watch. The reason, he said, was an “intense and almost lifelong” animosity between the pair. The resulting litigation within the family was only resolved in an out-of-court settlement in 2009, though the feud rumbled on with the earl insisting that he would not be buried in their mausoleum. “I’m going in my garden,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Why should I mix with the Lowthers when they’ve been such [unknown expletive] all my life?”...
...Lowther’s marriage in 1971 to Pamela Middleton, a student nurse and the daughter of a railway crossing keeper, was said to have started the strain with his father. “He didn’t approve,” Lowther said. “But he wasn’t marrying her — I was.” The marriage was dissolved after ten years and in 1986 he married Angela Wyatt. “That was finished in four or five years,” he added. In 1999 he married Elizabeth Arnison, known as Lady Liz, who survives him. Oliver, an adopted son from his first marriage was conceived by artificial insemination and so does not inherit the earldom, which passes to Hugh’s half-brother, William Lowther...
The 8th Earl of Lonsdale, landowner and mountain salesman, was born on May 27, 1949. He died after a short illness on June 22, 2021, aged 72
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-8th-earl-of-lonsdale-obituary-72rhfdmmv

[Richard R]

Obit in the Telegraph of 3 July 2021: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2021/07/02/earl-lonsdale-lake-district-landowner-fell-family-put-mountain/