BROKEN BY DEATH

Hokitika Guardian, 22 February 1933, Page 2

BROKEN BY DEATH

FAMILY’S REMARKABLE RECORD

BACK TO THE CONQUEROR. Efforts to trace the heir to the Right Hon. Ljord Bagot, who - died at the Staffordshire residence, Blithfield Hall, hear. Rugeley, on December 23, have pfovedy successful. The new Lord Bagot was formerly Mr Gerald William Bagot a second cousin of the dead peer, ana he has been living at Rambouillet, just outside Paris.

A constant traveller, the new Lord Bagot who is aged 66, has spent nearly all his life abroad. He has been heirpresumptive to the title since the death of his brother, the Hon. Claude Leveson Bagot, in March, 1930. It is understood that certain family estates will go with the title. The late Lord Bagot, however, disposed of the greater part of his huge estates in North Wales in 1928.

The peerage dates from 1780, and the baronetcy which preceded it was conferred in 1627, but the family were lords of .the manor, first of Bagot’s Bromley, and then, by marriage, of Blithfield, in. Staffordshire, since the Norman Conquest. The original Bagot settled in England before the Conquest. He was a Norman, but arrived gome years before William.

Burke’s “Peerage” records that from Domesday for 846 years son succeeded father in the family estates, except in the year 1198, when the holder, Simon Bagot, is not stated to have been the son of his predecessor.