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Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley, FSA (born 17 June 1939) is a British peer, author, and veteran right-wing activist. In 1941, at the age of three, he succeeded his first cousin once removed, the 6th Lord Sudeley, to the Barony of Sudeley, and until the House of Lords Act 1999 sat in that body as a hereditary peer.

A member of the Conservative Party, all his adult life, he was sometime President and also Chairman of the Conservative Monday Club for seventeen years. He is Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League.

Family

Sudeley's father, Captain Michael Hanbury-Tracy, a Scots Guards officer, died from wounds received at Dunkirk.

His paternal grandfather, Lieutenant Felix Hanbury-Tracy, also an officer in the Scots Guards, was killed attacking German positions near Fromelles on 19 December 1914.

His maternal grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Collis George Herbert St. Hill , the Royal North Devon Hussars, then commanding the 2/5 Sherwood Foresters, was killed by a sniper at Villers-Plouich, France, on July 8, 1917.

Sudeley served his National Service obligations in the ranks of the Scots Guards.

Education

Sudeley was educated at Eton, and later read history at Worcester College, Oxford. As a young man, studying at Oxford, he was offered the position of Tutor to King Hassan II of Morocco whilst on a visit to the country. He would have been charged with teaching the King how to hunt, swim and shoot. Although a good rider, Lord Sudeley declined, wishing to continue with his studies. Lord Sudeley has also lectured at the University of Bristol.

Political Activities

Sudeley was a very active member of the House of Lords for thirty nine years (since he was 21, the minimum age one can take one's seat), introducing several measures, most notably the Bill to prevent the unlicensed export of historical manuscripts. He was one of the hereditary peers who ceased to be members of the Upper House by the House of Lords Act 1999. In 1985 he was elected a Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League, .

Since the early 1970s, Lord Sudeley has been active in the Conservative Monday Club, and in 1991 he authored a booklet for them entitled and arguing for "The Preservation of the House of Lords".

He spoke out against the reform of the Lords, saying: "If it isn't broken why mend it?", and also that since he believed inherited titles were "inextricably" tied to the monarchy that it was "odd that they just want to touch one institution and not the other". He also cited the wealth of experience that the Lords had built up.

Sudeley was also a former Vice-president of the now-defunct Western Goals Institute, and on 25 September 1989, chaired a WGI dinner at Simpson's-in-the-Strand for El Salvador's President, Alfredo Cristiani, and his inner cabinet. .

He is Patron of the Bankruptcy Association (The 4th Lord Sudeley was foreclosed upon by Lloyds Bank in 1902), and was Convenor of the Forum for Stable Currencies. He is also Patron of the Prayer Book Society.

On (2 June 2006), The Times quoted Sudeley as stating, in a report to the Monday Club's Annual General Meeting, that "Hitler did well to get everyone back to work". It also reported him saying that "True though the fact may be that some races are superior to others", going on to suggest that such rhetoric might interfere with the Monday Club's hopes of being accepted again in Conservative Party circles.

In 2001, Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith had publicly distanced the party from the club until it ceased to "promulgate or discuss policies relating to race"; he also indicated that no Tory MPs should contribute to Right Now!, a quarterly magazine with which Sudeley was associated, which received notice after an article in it called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. Three Conservative M.P.s resigned from the Club.

Interests

Sudeley once described in Who's Who one of his hobbies as "Ancestor Worship", with "conversation" being listed in Debrett's. His enduring love throughout his life, and in which he continues to take an active interest, has been for the former family seat of Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire, built by the 1st Lord Sudeley to replace the mediaeval building nearby, which had been in the family for 1,000 years.

At Easter 1985, in conjunction with the century-old Manorial Society of Great Britain (of which he sits on the Governing Council), he held a conference there entitled "The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington"; he gave a similar talk on 20 November 2006 for the centenary dinner of the Manorial Society, at Brooks's club in St James's, of which he is a member. He is also a member of the Lansdowne Club. Lord Sudeley argued consistently in the House of Lords in defence of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer against what he saw as a reformist Synod of the Church of England. (he is a lay patron of the Prayer Book Society) and a past President of the Montgomeryshire Society.

In 1998 he co-founded and hosted the Forum for Stable Currencies which Lord Ahmed took over after the Reform of the House of Lords.

References

1. The Guardian
2. Great War Forum post re Lieutenant-Colonel Collis George Herbert St. Hill
3. Debrett's entry]
4. The Monarchist, no.66, p.5, 1985 Norwich, UK
5. BBC Archive
6. Daily Telegraph
7. The Times
8. Court & Social Columns, 26 September, 1989
9. Evening Standard
10. The Independent

Sources

• Copping, Robert, The Monday Club - Crisis and After May 1975, page 25, published by the Current Affairs Information Service, Ilford, Essex, (P/B).
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, Lords Reform - Why Tamper with the House of Lords, Monday Club publication, December 1979, (P/B).
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, A Guide to Hailes Church, nr. Winchcombe, Gloucester, 1980, (P/B), ISBN 0714020583
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, The Role of Hereditary in Politics, in The Monarchist, January 1982, no.60, Norwich, England.
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, Becket's Murderer - William de Tracy, in Family History magazine, Canterbury, August 1983, vol.13, no.97, pps: 3 - 36.
• Sudeley, the Rt. Hon.The Lord, essays in The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington, published by the Manorial Society of Great Britain, London, 1987,(P/B)
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, The Preservation of The House of Lords Monday Club, London, 1991, (P/B).
• London Evening Standard newspaper, 27 March 1991 - article: An heir of neglect - A Life in the Home of Lord Sudeley (pps:32-33).
• Births, Deaths & Marriages, Family Record Centre, Islington, London.
• Mosley, Charles, (editor) Burke's Peerage, Baronetage, & Knightage 106th edition, Switzerland, (1999), ISBN 2-940085-02-1
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, The Sudeley Bankruptcy in London Miscellany June 1999 edition.
• OK! magazine, London, issue 175, 20 August 1999, (7-page report on his wedding).
• Mitchell, Austin, M.P., Farewell My Lords, London, 1999, (P/B), ISBN 1-902301-43-9
• Gliddon, Gerald, The Aristocracy and The Great War, Norwich, 2002, ISBN 0-947893-35-0
• Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, Usery or Taking Interest for Lending Money, published by the Forum for Stable Currencies, 2004, (P/B).
• Perry, Maria, The House in Berkeley Square", London,2003.

• 1939 births
• Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
• Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
• Conservative Peers
• English antiquarians
• Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
• Living people
• British monarchists
• Old Etonians
• People from London