Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 8th Earl of Radnor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Pleydell-Bouverie,_8th_Earl_of_...

Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 8th Earl of Radnor (10 November 1927 – 10 August 2008) was a British nobleman. He was the son of William Pleydell-Bouverie, 7th Earl of Radnor and Helena Olivia Adeane.

He married, firstly, Anne Garden Seth-Smith, daughter of Donald Farquaharson Seth-Smith, on 8 July 1953 and they were divorced in 1962. He and Anne had two sons:

William Pleydell-Bouverie, 9th Earl of Radnor (b. 5 January 1955)

Hon. Peter John Pleydell-Bouverie DL (b. 14 January 1958), married Hon. Jane Victoria Gilmour (b. 1959), daughter of Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, in 1986 and had issue.

He married, secondly, Margaret Robin Fleming, daughter of Robin Fleming, in 1963 and they were divorced in 1985. They had four daughters:

Lady Martha Pleydell-Bouverie (b. 1964)

Lady Lucy Pleydell-Bouverie (b. 1964)

Lady Belinda Pleydell-Bouverie (b. 1966) whose husband died recently.

Lady Frances Pleydell-Bouverie (b. 1973)

He married, thirdly, Mary Jillean Gwenellan Eddy, daughter of William Edward Montague Eddy, in 1986. He died at Longford Castle in 2008.

From 1971 to 2008 he served as Governor of the French Hospital in Rochester, Kent. Successive Earls of Radnor were governors of the hospital from the eighteenth century to 2015.

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Landowning peer who wrote his family's history and cared for a collection of Old Masters

The Earl of Radnor had an encyclopaedic knowledge and appreciation of his art collection, which included works by Rubens, Van Dyck and Frans Hals, as well as Holbein's portrait of Erasmus. In 2001 he published A Huguenot Family – des Bouverie, Bouverie, Pleydell-Bouverie, which told the story of his family from 1536 to 1889.

His family – the Bouveries – were Huguenots in the Spanish Netherlands who were persecuted by the Catholic Duke of Alva, and in the 16th century Laurens des Bouverie, a silk merchant, moved to London, setting up in Threadneedle Street. Laurens founded the family fortune on the profits of trade with the Middle and Far East. His great-grandson, William, became Governor of the Bank of England and was created a baronet in 1714.

-He was educated at Chafyn Grove, Salisbury, and – during the war – at Greenvale on Long Island. He then went on to Harrow and up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Agriculture. Thereafter he ran the diverse family businesses, greatly increasing his inheritance by his diligence and careful stewardship.

On the death of his father in 1968 he became an active member of the House of Lords, contributing to debates until he and most other hereditary peers were ejected from the House in 1999.

He brought to the chamber a good, practical knowledge of farming, forestry, fish-farming and environmental matters.

He championed South America and sea fisheries, and, as chairman of the board of the Dyslexia Institute, spoke on special education – dyslexia having afflicted several members of his family.

In recent years, Jake Radnor opened Longford to the public on only one day a year, during which he would absent himself until the visitors had gone.

His elder son, Viscount Folkestone, born in 1955, succeeds to the earldom. (Obituary extracts, Telegraph, 2008)