TRAGEDY OF PEERAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21784, 25 October 1932, Page 10

TRAGEDY OF PEERAGE

TITLE TWICE EXTINCT?; CASE OF FOUR BROTHERS. The tragedy of four brothers who succeeded each other in a peerage-and died within 20 years without any ol them." leaving an heir''has been completed by the death at Freiburg, Germany, on June 14 of Lord Wenlock, the sixth baron, from pneumonia, aged -71. A strange coincidence is that he died exactly "a year to the day after the fifth barton. . Rarely has' there been such' a 'ease of four brothers following each other in the title because none left a eon to succeed him. Now for the second time the peerage becomes extinct. Originally. .the'Mfony was created in 1831, but the holder, Sir Robert Lawley,. died without 'a 'son ; ; ib 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. He had four sons, but while the eldest, Beilby Richard, succeeded him as second : baron- iii 1852, one of the others died a bachelor, and the other two had no children. The second baron was the father of the four tragic brothers, the eldest of whom, Beilby, succeeded him as third baronjnllSSQ,,' •:'.-,,> In 1872 Beilby had married Lady Constance Lascelles, daughter of the fourth Earl of Harewood, .nut 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 T>JF the next brother, the Hon: 'Algernon George Lawley, as fifth baron. -\ - «.; This Lordl Wenlock was for : 30 years a clergyman in 'the East End of -London, and afterwards-vicar of St. : ; Peter's,'Eaton; Square West. . A. The last' peer,. who was' fortaerly Sir Arthur Lawley, spent n fcreat deal of his life in the Empire overseas. He was in turn Administrator of Matabeleland, Gov?, ernor of Western Australia, LieutenantGovernor of the Transvaal; and ..Governor of Madras. He had a son, Richard Edward, and two daughters, .but the son died in 1909.