Charles Maurice Petty-FitzMaurice, 9th Marquess of Lansdowne LVO DL (born 21 February 1941), styled Earl of Shelburne between 1944 and 1997, is a British peer.
Contents |
He is the son of George Petty-FitzMaurice, 8th Marquess of Lansdowne, a former Conservative politician and Barbara née Chase. His father inherited the peerage titles (and the Bowood House estates in Wiltshire) from a cousin, the 7th Marquess of Lansdowne, who was killed in action in 1944.
He was Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II in 1956–1957.[1]
Lord Lansdowne (known then as Earl of Shelburne) served in the Kenya Regiment from 1960 to 1961.[2] In 1962 he was gazetted a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry[3] and in 1971 transferred with the rank of Lieutenant to the Royal Yeomanry attached to the Royal Armoured Corps.[2][4]
He was a member of Calne and Chippenham rural district council from 1964 to 1973, President of the Wiltshire Playing Fields Association from 1965 to 1974, a member of Wiltshire County Council from 1970 to 1985, and a councillor of North Wiltshire District Council from 1973 to 1976.[2] He was chairman of Calne and Chippenham RDC from 1970 to 1973 and of North Wiltshire DC from 1973 to 1976.[5] In 1990, he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Wiltshire.[6] He has served as President of the Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust from 1994 to date.[7]
At the 1979 general election, he contested Coventry North East for the Conservatives.[2]
On August 25, 1997, his father died and he became Marquess of Lansdowne and a member of the House of Lords.[2]
In 2001, Lord Lansdowne was appointed a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, shortly after retiring as a member of the Prince's Council of the Duchy of Cornwall.[8]
On 9 October 1965, he married, firstly, Lady Frances Helen Mary Eliot (6 March 1943 – 6 January 2004), daughter of Nicholas Eliot, 9th Earl of St Germans, but they were divorced in 1987, having had four children:[9]
In 1987 he married, secondly, Fiona Mary Merritt (b. 1954), daughter of Donald Merritt and Lady Davies,[2] an interior decorator known by her married name of Fiona Shelburne.
| Court offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Hon. Simon Scott |
Page of Honour 1956–1957 |
Succeeded by Oliver Russell |
| Peerage of Great Britain | ||
| Preceded by George Petty-FitzMaurice |
Marquess of Lansdowne 1999–present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
|
|||||||||||