Mervyn Herbert, Viscount Clive

Mervyn Horatio Herbert, 17th Baron Darcy de Knayth, styled Viscount Clive (7 May 1904 – 23 March 1943) was a British peer and Royal Air Force officer.

Styled the Hon. Mervyn Horatio Herbert from birth, he was the second son of George Charles Herbert, 4th Earl of Powis and his wife Violet, suo jure 16th Baroness Darcy de Knayth. His elder brother Percy, twelve years his senior, died of wounds received in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, at which point Mervyn became heir to his father's title Earl of Powis and took the courtesy title Viscount Clive. In 1929, at the death of his mother, he inherited the title of Baron Darcy de Knayth, making him a peer in his own right (while retaining the higher title of Viscount Clive by courtesy).

Mervyn was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating as B.A.. He then studied law at the Inner Temple and was called to the bar as barrister in 1929. He was also J.P. for the county of Shropshire, where he owned Styche Hall near Market Drayton, birthplace home of his direct ancestor Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive.^[1]

Mervyn would follow in his brother's footsteps by fighting for Britain, gaining the rank of Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. A recreational aviator,^[2] he enlisted at the outbreak of World War II in 1939 as an Aircraftsman, was promoted Flight Sergeant and later commissioned.^[1] At time of his death he was serving with No. 157 Squadron RAF,^[3] a Mosquito night fighter squadron then based at RAF Bradwell Bay, Essex.

In 1934 he married Vida Cuthbert (1910-2003), daughter of Capt James Cuthbert DSO, later lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Gloucester; they had one daughter.

He died in 1943, aged thirty-eight, while flying on active service, and was buried in the churchyard of Christ Church, Welshpool.^[3] His barony passed to his four-year-old daughter Davina. His father was left without male heirs so on his death his earldom passed to a distant cousin.

In 1946, the widowed Lady Clive remarried, to Brigadier Derek Schreiber, Chief of Staff to the Governor General of Australia: her daughter Davina, Lady Darcy de Knayth, acted as flower girl.^[4]

References

• ThePeerage.com