WIDOW OF SECOND BARON LYVEDEN DIES IN CONVENT

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 March 1949, Page 5

WIDOW OF SECOND BARON LYVEDEN DIES IN CONVENT

LONDON, March 28 (Rec. 7.5 pm)

—The death of the 72-year-old nun, Sistec Columba, in the Convent of the Poor Clares in York this week, has revealed the fact that Sister Columba, who entered the convent 36 years ago. was the widow of the second Baron Lyveden of Lyveden, in Northamptonshire, the peerage to which a Wellington resident, Mrs. Sydney Munro Archibald Vernon, of Day’s Bay, recently established his claim as heir-presumptive. Sister Columba, who was born Julia Kate Emary, was an 18-year-old shop assistant in Eastbourne when she met and married the 70-year-old Lord Lyveden in 1896. Lord Lyveden died four years later, leaving to his widow, it is believed, estates of over 4000 acres and two houses in London In 1913, however, Lady Lyveden, who became a Roman Catholic after her husband’s death, decided to renounce all her possessions and enter the strictly cloistered order of the Poor Clares. Her identity before she took her vows was known only to the Mother Superior and was not revealed until the notice of her death appeared in London newspapers last week. The present holder of the Lyveden peerage is the bachelor fourth Baron, Robert Fitzpatrick Courtenay Vernon, who is a cousin of Sydney Munro Archibald Vernon, the New Zealand heir-presumptive. The second Baron, who married Julia Kate Emary, was Mr Vernon’s greatuncle. Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.