History
This family descends from Sir Thomas Hervey. He was Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds from 1679 to 1690, and many members of the family represented this constituency in the House of Commons. The first to follow in his footsteps was his son John Hervey. In 1703, he was raised to the Peerage of England as Baron Hervey, of Ickworth in the County of Suffolk, and in 1714 he was further honoured when he was made Earl of Bristol in the Peerage of Great Britain. The 1st Earl of Bristol died in 1751. His two eldest sons (Carr and John) having died before him, he was succeeded in turn by three of his grandsons - all brothers and sons of the 1st Earl's younger son John. An early ancestor of Sir Thomas Hervey was John Hervey (b.1290) of Bedfordshire. His descendant was Thomas Hervey (d.1467), who was the first Hervey to live at Ickworth, Suffolk.
The 2nd Earl held political office as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord Privy Seal and died unmarried. He was succeeded as 3rd Earl by his younger brother, who was a Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy and also served as Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1766 to 1767. He also died without legitimate issue and was succeeded by the next younger brother, who thereby became the 4th Earl. Known as the "Earl-Bishop", the fourth Earl served as Bishop of Cloyne from 1767 to 1768 and as Bishop of Derry from 1768 to 1803. Although an efficient clergyman, varying estimates have been found of his character. In 1795, he began expanding his ancestral home, thus creating Ickworth House in its modern form. The house was still unfinished when he died in 1803 and was completed by his successor. In 1799 he became the fifth Baron Howard de Walden when the abeyance of this peerage was terminated. Lord Bristol married Elizabeth, sister and heir of Sir Charles Davers, 5th Baronet (c. 1730–1763), and great-granddaughter of Thomas Jermyn, 2nd Baron Jermyn (see the Baron Jermyn). His second son, John Augustus Hervey, Lord Hervey, was a Captain in the Royal Navy and also served as ambassador to Florence. He predeceased his father. His daughter the Hon. Elizabeth Catherine Caroline Hervey (1780–1803) married Charles Ellis, later first Baron Seaford. Their son Charles succeeded as sixth Baron Howard of Walden on the death of his great-grandfather, Lord Bristol, in 1803 (see Baron Howard de Walden and Baron Seaford). Upon the 4th Earl's death, the Bristol title passed to his third but eldest surviving son Frederick, who thereby became the 5th Earl. He was a politician and served under Henry Addington as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1801 to 1803.
In 1826 the 5th Earl was created Marquess of Bristol and Earl Jermyn, of Horningsheath in the County of Suffolk, both in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. On his death in 1859 the titles passed to his eldest son Frederick (1800–1864). The 2nd Marquess was a Tory politician and was Treasurer of the Household under Sir Robert Peel from 1841 to 1846. When he died, the marquessate passed to his eldest son, also named Frederick. Before succeeding as 3rd Marquess, he had represented the traditional family seat in parliament and also served as Lord-Lieutenant of Suffolk. The 3rd Marquess died without male issue and was succeeded in turn by two of his nephews, the sons of Lord Augustus Hervey, second son of the 2nd Marquess. The 4th Marquess was a Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy and also sat, as his uncle had done, as Conservative Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds. He had no sons and was succeeded in the Hervey titles and estates by his younger brother. The 5th Marquess was Minister and Consul-General to Colombia from 1919 to 1923, and Minister to Peru and Ecuador from 1923 to 1929. His only son, the 6th Marquess, was chancellor of the Monarchist League. He moved to Monte Carlo in early 1979 as tax exile, where he died on 10 March 1985.
The 6th Marquess of Bristol married three times. His son from his first marriage succeeded as 7th Marquess. A flamboyant character, he died childless and virtually penniless after decades of drug abuse at the age of 44 in January 1999. The 6th Marquess's only child from his second marriage, Lord Nicholas Hervey, died by his own hand at the age of 36 in 1998. From his third marriage, the 6th Marquess had three children: Frederick Hervey, 8th Marquess of Bristol, Lady Victoria Hervey and Lady Isabella Hervey. While the present Lord Bristol is involved in business, his two sisters are reality TV actresses and socialites whose lives feature in the popular press (the latter being the "Face of Playboy UK").
Read more about this topic: Marquess Of Bristol
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)