Brinsley Le Poer Trench, 8th Earl of Clancarty

William Francis Brinsley Le Poer Trench, 8th Earl of Clancarty, 7th Marquess of Heusden (18 September 1911 – 18 May 1995) was a prominent ufologist.^[1] He was an Irish peer, as well as a nobleman in the Dutch nobility.

Biography

He was the fifth son of William Frederick Le Poer Trench, 5th Earl of Clancarty by Mary Gwatkin Ellis. He had four older half-brothers born to the 5th Earl's first wife, Isabel Maud Penrice Bilton, the actress known as Belle Bilton, who died of cancer in 1906. Brinsley was educated at the Pangbourne Nautical College.

From 1956 to 1959 Clancarty edited the Flying Saucer Review and founded the International Unidentified Object Observer Corps. He also found employment selling advertising space for a gardening magazine housed opposite Waterloo Station.

In 1967, he founded Contact International and served as its first president. He also served as vice-president of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA). Clancarty was an honorary life member of the now defunct Ancient Astronauts Society which supported the ideas put forward by Erich von Däniken in his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?.

In 1975 he succeeded to the earldom on the death of his half-brother, giving him a seat in the British Parliament. He used his new position to found a UFO Study Group at the House of Lords, introducing Flying Saucer Review to its library and pushing for the declassification of UFO data.

Four years later he organised a celebrated debate in the House of Lords on UFOs which attracted many speeches on both sides of the question. In one debate, Lord Strabolgi, for the Government, declared that there was nothing to convince him that any alien spacecraft had ever visited the Earth.

Private life

Clancarty married first, in 1940, Diana (1919–1999), daughter of Sir William Younger, Bt. This marriage was dissolved in 1947. He married secondly, in 1961, Mrs Wilma Belknap (née Vermilyea) (1915–1995) and that marriage was dissolved in 1969. His third marriage was in 1974, to Mrs Mildred Allewyn Spong (née Bensusan) (1895–1975). She died in 1975 but Clancarty remarried a fourth time, in 1976, to Mrs May Beasley (née Radonicich) (1904–2003).

He lived most of his life in South Kensington and died in Bexhill-on-Sea in 1995, leaving his extensive collection of papers to Contact International.

He was succeeded to the earldom by his nephew Nicholas Le Poer Trench (b. 1952).

Hollow earth

Trench was a firm believer in flying saucers. He soundly dismissed the idea of a hollow earth.

Perhaps his greatest contribution to the search for truth was his personal demonstration of open-mindedness. As an example for closed-minded skeptics there is no equal.

In 1966 Trench left no doubt as to his feeling about the possibility of a hollow planet. He thought the whole idea was ridiculous. As he explained in his book The Flying Saucer Story (1966): " …A theory that purports to have been advanced seriously by a few writers on the flying saucer subject is the claim that saucers may come from the interior of the earth!

" … It’s interesting how those not mentally equipped to deal with abstracts and are not on speaking terms with the unconscious or alternate brain lobes, always have a psychological need to invent something ‘real’ that exists in an ‘interior’. The fact that we already know the conditions making up the interior of our earth makes no difference.

"Once again, in unison, if you please! The core is a molten generator, the seat of power, shifting magnetic fields extending nearly to the earth’s surface … Sometimes it’s all but impossible to stay alive on the surface, the earth beneath is so turbulent. Obviously then, a race of highly advanced technologists would be obliged to stabilized both topside and core before venturing downward to set up permanent housekeeping. So that’s that! (Pages 119-120).

He claimed that he could trace his descent from 63,000BC, when beings from other planets had landed on Earth in spaceships.^[2]

Most humans, he said, were descended from these aliens: "This accounts for all the different colour skins we've got here," he said in 1981. A few of these early aliens did not come from space, he explained, but emerged through tunnels from a civilisation which "still existed beneath the Earth's crust." There were seven or eight of these tunnels altogether, one at the North Pole, another at the South Pole, and others in such places as Tibet. "I haven't been down there myself," Clancarty said, "but from what I gather [these beings] are very advanced."

Other claims

According to Trench in his book The Sky People, Adam and Eve, Noah any many of the other characters from the Bible originally lived on Mars. Trench believed that Adam and Eve were experiment creations of extraterrestrials.^[3] His claim was that the Biblical description of the Garden of Eden was inconsistent with what was on Earth and as Mars contained canals, that the Garden of Eden must have been located on Mars. He further claimed that the north polar ice cap melted on Mars, and this caused the descendants of Adam and Eve to move to Earth.^[4][5]

Trench also claimed to know a former U.S. test pilot who said he was one of six persons present at a meeting between President Eisenhower and a group of aliens, which allegedly took place at Edwards Air Force Base on April 4, 1954. Clancarty reported that the test pilot told him "Five different alien craft landed at the base. Three were saucer-shaped and two were cigar shaped... the aliens looked something like humans, but not exactly." ^[6]

Bibliography

• The Sky People (1960)
• Men Among Mankind (1962)
• Forgotten Heritage (1964)
• The Flying Saucer Story (1966)
• Operation Earth (1969)
• The Eternal Subject (1973)
• Secret of the Ages (1974).
• Reptiles from the Internal World (1979)
• China in the Closet: A Romantic Mystery (1981)
• Egos and Sub-Egos (1983)
• UFOs: Just Shiny Birds? with Anna Robb (1984).

References

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl of Clancarty