Ham and Petersham Rifle and Pistol Club - Lord Sudeley biography page one

Lord Sudeley - 1st President

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Lord Sudeley, a remarkable man with a part in National history

Charles Hanbury-Tracy 4th Lord Sudeley was born in 1840 and died on the 9th December 1922. He was President of the Ham & Petersham Rifle & Pistol Club from its inception in 1906 until his death.

The family

The family goes back to Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, and had connections to both sides at the time of the Norman invasion. Luckily the man was under age at the time and therefore wasn't asked to choose sides. An ancestor was one of the four Knights who killed Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.

The last Lord Tracy died in 1797 and his daughter married one of her cousins Charles Hanbury of Pontypool who changed his name to Hanbury-Tracy and was created Lord Sudeley at Queen Victoria's Coronation, mainly because he was the Chairman of the Commission which chose the design of the new Houses of Parliament.

Our Lord Sudeley

Charles Hanbury-Tracy was born into this family in 1840 as a younger son and joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14. Since there was nothing at complicated as training in those days and soon saw action in the taking of the Aland Islands from Russia in the Crimean War. After this he had a long commission on HMS Amethyst which took him almost everywhere in the World. In 1857 he saw action at Fatshan Creek in the Opium Wars. His career continued with gunnery courses until he became gunnery lieutenant of HMS Shannon in 1862.

Parliament

His father, the 2nd Lord Sudeley died in 1863 and Charles was recalled from the Navy to fight and win his brother's seat in the House of Commons for Montgomery Boroughs. This he held until his brother's death in 1877, when he inherited the peerage and left the Commons seat to his younger brother Frederick.

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