Peregrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow

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Belton House, the ancestral home of the Brownlow family

Peregrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow (born 1899 - died 1978) was the son of Adelbert Salusbury Cockayne Cust, 5th Baron Brownlow, and his wife Maud Buckle. The 6th Baron Brownlow married three times. His first wife Katherine, who died in 1952, was the wife of Brigadier General Sir David Alexander Kinloch, Bt,CB,MVO. After her death he married Dorothy Carlotta who died in 1966. He again remarried, and his third wife, Leila, survived him.

During the 1930's Brownlow was a close friend and Lord-in-waiting to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. The prince and his mistress Wallis Simpson spent many weekends at Brownlow's country house Belton House. Upon the prince's accession to the throne, Lord Brownlow became heavily involved in the abdication crisis which followed the new King's intention to marry Simpson. Brownlow personally accompanied Simpson on her flight to France to escape the media attention, and vainly attempted to talk Simpson into renouncing the King.^[1] Returning to England, Brownlow attempted to enlist the support of the King's mother Queen Mary, but she refused to even receive him. (Thornton, 136). Brownlow's career as a courtier was coming to a close.

Following the abdication, he attempted to extricate himself from the ex-King's circle, refusing to attend the exiled King's marriage ceremony in 1937. For this Edward and his wife, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, regarded Brownlow as treacherous. The Duchess in particular never forgave the man who once championed her. Brownlow died some 40 years later without having received one word of comfort or gratitude from the couple (Thornton, 349). However, lacking the Duchess's forgiveness was one thing; following the accession of the new King George VI, Brownlow was horrified to read, without prior warning, in the Court Circular that he had been replaced as the sovereign's Lord-in-Waiting. Phoning Buckingham Palace for an explanation, he was given the curt information that his resignation had been accepted - he had never tendered it. It was also made clear to him that the new king and his consort, Queen Elizabeth, had ordered that Brownlow's name was never to appear in the "Court Circular" again ^[2]. Today, The National Trust has mounted a permanent exhibition at Belton displaying Brownlow's relationship with the Windsors. Nowhere does the information provided mention Brownlow's fall from grace with both the Windsors and the establishment.