William Lygon, 8th Earl Beauchamp

Viscount Elmley

William Lygon, 8th Earl Beauchamp DL (3 July 1903 – 3 January 1979) was a politician in the United Kingdom.

He was the eldest son of the controversial William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, sometime leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. Standing as a Liberal, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for East Norfolk at the 1929 general election. At the 1931 general election, when the Liberal Party split over participation in Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, he stood and was elected in the interest of the breakaway Liberal National grouping (known as National Liberal after 1948), which aligned itself with the National Government even after the official Liberals (called "Samuelites" after their leader Herbert Samuel) crossed the floor into opposition in 1932, and eventually (in 1968) merged with the Conservative Party. Lygon, known while an MP by his courtesy title, Viscount Elmley, retained his seat as a Liberal National in the 1935 general election. He succeeded to the peerage as the 8th Earl Beauchamp on his father's death in 1938. At his own death without male issue in 1979, his peerages became extinct.

He is sometimes said to be the model for the character of Lord Brideshead ("Bridey"), eldest son of the Marquess of Marchmain, in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, presumably because his father is often cited as the model for "Bridey"'s father Lord Marchmain.^[1]

Marriage

On 16 June 1936, Beauchamp married Else Schiwe (1895–1989), daughter of Viggo Schiwe (a Danish character actor of distinction) and former wife of Peter Christian Blicher Dornonville de la Cour (d.1924). Beauchamp had no issue of his own by this marriage, but gained a stepdaughter, Agnete Regitze Dornonville de la Cour (born 1916, died 2010).

Home

At one time Lygon lived in the disused Winterton Lighthouse in Winterton-on-Sea, Norfolk, a village in his parliamentary constituency; after succeeding his father as the 8th Earl Beauchamp in 1938, he and Countess Beauchamp made their home at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire, the ancestral seat of the Earls Beauchamp.

References

• Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN 0-900178-06-X. 
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Lygon (Viscount Elmley)