Name Peter 8th Children Lady Juliet Tadgell | ||
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Born 31 December 1910 ( 1910-12-31 ) Died May 13, 1948, Saint-Bauzile, Ardeche, France Spouse Dorothea Plunket (m. 1933) Parents William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam Similar People Lady Juliet Tadgell, Victor Hervey - 6th Marquess, John Hervey - 7th Marquess, Lord Nicholas Hervey, Frederick Hervey - 8th Marquess | ||
Grandchildren Lord Nicholas Hervey | ||
William Henry Lawrence Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, DSO (31 December 1910 – 13 May 1948), styled Viscount Milton before 1943, was a British soldier, nobleman, and aristocrat.
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Early life
The fifth child and only son of the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, he was born at the family's seat of Wentworth Woodhouse. As a former Cadet with the Eton College Contingent (June Division) Officer Training Corps he was commissioned Second lieutenant into the Royal Scots Greys (Supplementary Reserve of Officers) on 20 July 1929.
Second world war
During the Second World War he served with distinction in the Commandos and later for the Special Operations Executive, gaining a Distinguished Service Order.
Family life
He was married, on 19 April 1933, to Olive Dorothea "Obby" Plunket (d. 1975) (the daughter of Benjamin Plunket, Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, and thereby granddaughter of the 4th Baron Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin), with whom he had one daughter Lady Anne Juliet Dorothea Maud Wentworth-Fitzwilliam was born on 24 January 1935.
In Lord Fitzwilliam's later years the marriage to Obby became strained. At the time of his death, he was seeking a divorce in order to marry someone else. In 1943 he inherited the Earldom from his father.
From 1946 he was romantically linked with the widowed Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, sister of future U.S. President John F. Kennedy. She was killed with Fitzwilliam in an airplane crash, although the nature of their relationship was obscured in the newspaper accounts at the time.
Death
He died in France in a plane crash on 13 May 1948. At his death the title passed to his second cousin once removed, Eric Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, and his fortune, then estimated at 45 million pounds, which included half of the Wentworth Woodhouse estate, the Coolattin estate in County Wicklow, Ireland, and a considerable part of the Fitzwilliam art collection, passed to his daughter, the present Lady Juliet Tadgell.