TRAGEDY OF PEERAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRAGEDY OF PEERAGE

TITLE TWICE EXTINCT CASE OF FOUR BROTHERS NONE LEAVES AN HEIR The tragedy of four brothers who .succeeded , each other in a peerage and died within 20 years without any of them an heir ,has been completed by 'tho death at Freiburg, Germany, on Juno ;14 of Lord Wenlock, the sixth: baron, from pneumonia,, aged 71. A strange 'coincidence is that ho died exactly a year to the day after the fifth baron. Rarely has there been such a case of four brothers following each other in tho title because none left a son to succeed him. Now for tho second time the peerage becomes extinct. Originally the barony was created in 1831, but the holder, Sir Robert Lawley, died without a son in : 1834 and it lapsed. Five years later the barony was revived in favour of Robert's brother Paul, who thus became the First Lord Wenlock of the present peerage. Tie had four sons, but while the eldest Beilbv Richard, succeeded him as second baron in 1852, one of tho others died a bachelor and the other two had no children. Tho second baron was the father of the four tragic brothers, the eldest of whom, Beilby, succeeded him as third baron in 1880. In 1872 Beilby had married Lady Constance Lascelles, daughter of tho fourth 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 fourth baron. He, though married, had no children, and on his death, in 1918, he was succeeded by the next brother, the Hoit. Algernon George Lawley, as fifth baron. This Lord Wenlock was for 30 years a clergyman in the East. End of London, and afterwards vicar of St. Peter's, Eaton Square West. The 1 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 Western Australia, LieutenantGovernor of the Transvaal, and Governor of Madras. He had a son, R-iihard Edward, and two daughters, but tho son died in 1909.