William Charles Heaton-Armstron, MP, Lord of the Manor of Roscrea

Liberal MP for Sudbury 1906-10

http://www.thepeerage.com/p26397.htm#i263970

William Charles Heaton-Armstrong was born on 1 September 1853.1 He was the son of Lieutenant John Heaton-Armstrong and Josephine Thérèse Mayr-Melnhof.1 He married Baroness Bertha Maximiliana Zais Edelstein, daughter of Baron Zois Edelstein, on 7 September 1885 at Veldes, Austria.1,2 He died on 22 July 1917 at age 63.1

    He fought in the Russo-Turkish War in 1876, with the Turkish Navy.1 He fought in the Chilean-Peruvian War, with the Chileans.1 He was invested as a Fellow, Royal Astronomical Society (F.R.A.S.)1 He was invested as a Fellow, Royal Geographical Society (F.R.G.S.)1 He succeeded to the title of Lord of the Manor of Roscrea [feudal baron] in 1891.3 He held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.)1

http://landedfamilies.blogspot.co.za/2015/09/182-armstrong-and-heat...

William Charles Heaton-Armstrong (1853-1917) must have been a remarkable man. He ran away from school at the age of fourteen and joined the merchant navy, with which he travelled the world until 1881 (he later claimed to have visited almost every British colony), by which time he was a Captain, and had also seen military service with the Turkish and Chilean navies. He then went into business and seems to have made quite a lot of money from ventures as varied as building railways in Canada (where the town of Armstrong, British Columbia is named after him) to importing German beer. He then turned to British politics, and served as Liberal MP for Sudbury in 1906-10. After one term in the house he went back to business and set up a bank, which failed during the First World War and bankrupted him, although he did eventually pay off all his liabilities before he died in 1917. His interests were as varied as his career, from astronomy to big game hunting, and he found time to publish a technical manual for sailors on calculating the sun's meridian altitude and to petition Queen Victoria (unsuccessfully) for the creation of the baronetcy which had been offered to his great-grandfather. In 1885, after being reconciled with his father - who looked askance at his son's business career as unsuited to a gentleman, but changed his mind when his son was able to help him financially - he married an Austrian baroness, and they had two sons and a daughter, who had almost equally remarkable lives.