Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley

Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley, (17 June 1939 – 5 September 2022) was a British peer, author, and monarchist. In 1941, at the age of two, he succeeded his first cousin once removed, Richard Hanbury-Tracy, 6th Baron Sudeley, to the Barony of Sudeley and until the House of Lords Act 1999 sat as a hereditary peer.

A member of the Conservative Party all his adult life, he was sometimes President and also Chairman of the Conservative Monday Club for seventeen years. He was Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League, and President of the Traditional Britain Group.

Early life and education

Merlin Hanbury-Tracy was born on 17 June 1939 to Captain Michael Hanbury-Tracy, a Scots Guards officer, who died from wounds received at Dunkirk, and Colline Annabel, only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Collis George Herbert St. Hill, the Royal North Devon Hussars, commander of the 2/5 battalion of Sherwood Foresters, who was also killed by a sniper at Villers-Plouich, France, on 8 July 1917. Sudeley's paternal grandfather, Lieutenant Felix Hanbury-Tracy, also an officer in the Scots Guards, was killed attacking German positions near Fromelles on 19 December 1914.

Sudeley was educated at Eton, and later graduated in History from Worcester College, Oxford. Sudeley has also lectured at the University of Bristol. He served his National Service obligations in the ranks of the Scots Guards.

Political activity

Sudeley served as an active member of the House of Lords for 39 years (from the age of 21, the minimum age one can take one's seat), introducing several measures, most notably the debate to prevent the unlicensed export of historical manuscripts and, in 1981, a Bill to uphold the Book of Common Prayer, which was cleared on Second Reading. He was one of the hereditary peers expelled from the Upper House by the House of Lords Act 1999. He spoke out against the reform of the Lords, asking, "If it isn't broken why mend it?" He also said that since he believed inherited titles were "inextricably" tied to the monarchy that it was "odd that they just want to touch one institution and not the other". He also cited the wealth of experience that the Lords had built up. In 1985 he was elected a Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League.

Since the early 1970s, Sudeley had been active in the Conservative Monday Club of which he became president in February 1991. He wrote for them a leading essay on "The Role of Heredity in Politics", produced a Club Policy Paper against ''Lords Reform'' in December 1979, and in 1991 they published his booklet titled, and arguing for, ''The Preservation of the House of Lords'', with a foreword by parliamentarian John Stokes.

In September 2001, the Conservative Party leadership candidate Iain Duncan Smith said the Monday Club was a "viable organisation… in a sense what the party is about". However, six weeks later, after becoming leader, he publicly distanced the party from the Monday Club until it ceased to "promulgate or discuss policies relating to race"; he also indicated that no Conservative MPs should contribute to '' Right Now!'', a quarterly magazine of which Sudeley was a Patron, after an article in it described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist".
On 2 June 2006, ''The Times'' quoted Sudeley as stating, in a report of the Monday Club's Annual General Meeting, that "Hitler did well to get everyone back to work". It also reported him saying that "True though the fact may be that some races are superior to others", going on to suggest that such rhetoric might interfere with the Monday Club's hopes of being accepted again in Conservative Party circles.

Sudeley was also a vice-president of the now-defunct Western Goals Institute, and on 25 September 1989, chaired a WGI dinner at Simpson's-in-the-Strand for El Salvadorian President, Alfredo Cristiani, and his inner cabinet.

He was Patron of the Bankruptcy Association (Lloyds Bank foreclosed upon Charles Hanbury-Tracy, 4th Baron Sudeley in 1893, when his debt was covered twice over by large assets) and Convenor of the Forum for Stable Currencies. He was also Lay Patron of the Prayer Book Society and a past President of the Powysland Club.

Interests

Sudeley once described in ''Who's Who'' one of his hobbies as "Ancestor Worship", with "Conversation" being listed in Debrett's. His enduring love throughout his life, and in which he continued to take an active interest, has been for the former family seat of Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire, personally designed by the 1st Lord Sudeley to replace the medieval moated manor house built on land which had been in the family for 1,000 years. In its successful blend of the Perpendicular Gothic and Picturesque styles, Toddington is the fore-runner of the Houses of Parliament when the soon-to-be 1st Lord Sudeley was selected as Chairman of the new parliamentary committee to settle upon the design. His contributions based upon Toddington's were accepted and enhanced.

At Easter 1985, in conjunction with the century-old Manorial Society of Great Britain (of which he sat on the Governing Council), Sudeley held a conference at his old home, the proceedings published in a volume entitled ''The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington'', taking the history of his family back to Thomas Becket's murder and ultimately to Charlemagne. On 21 November 2006, he arranged a further conference at the Society of Antiquaries of London on "Visual Aspects of Toddington in the 19th century".

Sudeley, as a historian, has written many published essays, including a history of the English gentleman for a German pharmaceutical magazine ''Die Waage'', and has completed a history of the House of Lords to give ascendancy to its Tory as opposed to Whig history interpretation. The book is entitled ''Peers Through the Mist of Time'', the launch taking place at Brooks's Club in London St.James, where Sudeley was an old member, on 28 September 2018. "Toddington, the Unforgotten Forerunner", is Sudeley’s story of his Regency family home, personally designed in a pioneering blend of Perpendicular Gothic and Picturesque by his forbear Charles Hanbury-Tracy, ennobled by Queen Victoria as First Lord Sudeley, later Chairman of the Commission for the Rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament in the same style, and its tragic and unexplained loss, Diehard Books, 2021. He is also the author of a satire on Greek mythology (published in John Pudney's famous ''Pick of Today's Short Stories'') and a quantity of politically-incorrect short stories mostly published in the ''London Miscellany'' magazine. In recent years Sudeley style-edited a definitive monograph on Azerbaijan's architecture, translated from the Russian.

Personal life and death

Lord Sudeley lived in London. He had been married three times and divorced twice, without issue.

Lord Sudeley married firstly, on 18 January 1980 (marriage dissolved 1988), The Honourable Elizabeth Mairi Villiers (3 November 1941 – 29 September 2014), daughter of Derek William Charles Keppel, Viscount Bury (heir-apparent of the 9th Earl of Albemarle) and Lady Mairi Vane-Tempest-Stewart (youngest daughter of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, and ex-wife of Alastair Michael Hyde Villiers, a Partner in Panmure Gordon & Company stockbrokers.

He married secondly, in 1999 (marriage dissolved 2006), Margarita Kellett (born 1962), daughter of Nikolai Danko, ex-wife of Lloyd's broker Nigel Kellett.

Sudeley married thirdly, in 2010, Dr Tatiana Dudina (born 19 August 1950), daughter of Colonel Boris Dudin and Galina Veselovskaya. Lady Sudeley holds a doctorate in philology from Moscow State Linguistic University.

Sudeley died on 5 September 2022 at the age of 83. He was succeeded in the Barony of Sudeley by his fourth cousin once removed, Nicholas Hanbury-Tracy.

References

Sources

* Copping, Robert, ''The Monday Club - Crisis and After'' May 1975, page 25, published by the Current Affairs Information Service, Ilford, Essex, (P/B).
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon. The Lord, ''Lords Reform - Why Tamper with the House of Lords'', Monday Club publication, December 1979, (P/B).
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon. The Lord, ''A Guide to Hailes Church'', nr. Winchcombe, Gloucester, 1980, (P/B),
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, ''The Role of Hereditary in Politics'', in ''The Monarchist'', January 1982, no.60, Norwich, England.
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, ''Becket's Murderer - William de Tracy'', in ''Family History'' magazine, Canterbury, August 1983, vol.13, no.97, pps: 3 - 36.
* Sudeley, the Rt. Hon.The Lord, essays in ''The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington'', published by the Manorial Society of Great Britain, London, 1987,(P/B)
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, ''The Preservation of The House of Lords'' Monday Club, London, 1991, (P/B).
* London ''Evening Standard'' newspaper, 27 March 1991 - article: ''An heir of neglect - A Life in the Home of Lord Sudeley'' (pps:32-33).
* Births, Deaths & Marriages, Family Record Centre, Islington, London.
* Mosley, Charles, (editor) ''Burke's Peerage, Baronetage, & Knightage'' 106th edition, Switzerland, (1999),
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, ''The Sudeley Bankruptcy'' in ''London Miscellany'' June 1999 edition.
* ''OK!'' magazine, London, issue 175, 20 August 1999, (7-page report on his wedding).
* Mitchell, Austin, M.P., ''Farewell My Lords'', London, 1999, (P/B),
* Gliddon, Gerald, ''The Aristocracy and The Great War'', Norwich, 2002,
* Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, ''Usery or Taking Interest for Lending Money'', published by the Forum for Stable Currencies, 2004, (P/B).
* Perry, Maria, ''The House in Berkeley Square'', London,2003.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sudeley, Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley
1939 births
2022 deaths
Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Conservative Party (UK) hereditary peers
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
British monarchists
People educated at Eton College
Politicians from London
Royal North Devon Yeomanry officers