PEERAGE TRAGEDY.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10885, 11 August 1932, Page 3

PEERAGE TRAGEDY.

BROTHERS WITHOUT HEIRS. The tragedy of four brothers who succeeded each other in a peerage and died within 20 years without any of them leaving an heir is completed by the death at Freiburg, -Germany, of Lord Wenlock, the 6th baron, from pneumonia, aged 71. A strange coincidence is that he died exactly a year to the day (June 14) after the sth baron. Rarely has there been such a case of four brothers following each other in the title because none left a son to succeed him. Now for the second time, the peerage becomes extinct. Originally the barony was created in 18 31, but the holder (Sir Robert Lawley) died' without a son in 1834, and it lapsed. Barony Revived. Five years later the barony was revived In favour of his brother Paul, who thus became the Ist Lord Wenlock of the present peerage. He had four sons, but while the eldest, Beilby Richard, succeeded him as 2nd Baron in 1852. one of the others died a bachelor, and the other two had no children. The 2nd Baron was the father of the four tragic brothers, the eldest of whom, Beilby, succeeded him as 2nd Baron in 1880. In 1872 Beilby had married Lady Constance Lascelies, daughter of the 4th Earl of Harewood, but they had only a daughter, and when he died in 1912 the title went to his brother, the Hon. R. T. Lawley, the 4th baron. He, though married, had no children, and on his death in 1918, he was succeeded by the next brother, the Hon. Algernon George Lawley, as sth baron. This Lord Wenlock was for 30 years a clergyman in the Bast End of London, and afterwards vicar of St. Peter’s, Eaton-square, W. The last peer, who was formerly Sir Arthur Lawley, spent a great deal, of his life in the Empire overseas. He was in turn Administrator of Matabeleland, Governor of West ern Australia, Lieut.-Governor of the Transvaal, aud Governor of Madras. He had a son, Richard Edward, and two daughters, but the son died in 1909.