Kenelm Charles Everard Digby Pepys, 8th Earl of Cottenham (27 November 1948 – 20 October 2000) was an English peer, baronet, cricketer, equestrian, business man, and designer. Known until 1968 as Viscount Crowhurst, he was later known to his friends as Charlie Cottenham.[1] He was a member of the House of Lords from 1969 until 1999.

The son of Digby Pepys, 7th Earl of Cottenham, and his wife Lady Angela Larnach-Nevill, a daughter of Guy Larnach-Nevill, 4th Marquess of Abergavenny,[2] he was a second cousin seven times removed of the diarist Samuel Pepys[3] and was educated at Eton College.[2]

On 12 May 1968, aged nineteen, he succeeded his father as Earl of Cottenham, Viscount Crowhurst, of Crowhurst, Surrey, Baron Cottenham, of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, and as a Baronet, of Wimpole Street. The family seat was then at Priory Manor, near Kington St Michael, Wiltshire.[2][3] On 15 March 1975 Cottenham married Sarah Lombard-Hobson, daughter of Captain Samuel Richard Le Hunte Lombard-Hobson CVO OBE RN, of Sherrington.[4]

Cottenham played cricket for Eton and for Northamptonshire Second XI as a fast bowler.[5] He toured the West Indies in 1970 with the Duke of Norfolk's XI.[6] He was a three day eventer, competing at Badminton and Burghley Horse Trials, and representing Great Britain overseas. He gave up competing after his wife had a bad fall.[7][8] In 1984, after retiring from eventing, Cottenham lent his yard at Priory Manor to his friend Mark Todd, who brought with him his horse Charisma.[1] They won an Olympic Gold Medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.[9]

Cottenham ran a successful chain of English-language schools.[5]

He and his wife had three children:[4]

  • Lady Georgina Marye Pepys (born 1981)
  • Mark John Henry Pepys, 9th Earl of Cottenham (born 1983), m. Juan Du, of Kunming, China
    • Charlie Thomas Pepys, Viscount Crowhurst (born 2020)
  • Hon. Sam Richard Pepys (born 1986)

In 2007, Cottenham's widow married Richard George Ford, a kinsman of Viscount Hampden.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 Mark Todd, Second Chance: The Autobiography (2012), pp. 30–31
  2. 1 2 3 Peter W. Hammond, ed., The Complete Peerage, Vol. XIV (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998), p. 210
  3. 1 2 "Cottenham 8th Earl of" in Jonathan Parker, ed., Debrett's People of Today (1995), p. 440
  4. 1 2 Burke's Peerage, Vol. 1 (2003), p. 911
  5. 1 2 Wisden 2001, p. 1579.
  6. ↑ "Duke of Norfolk's Side in West Indies, 1970", Wisden 1971, pp. 922–25.
  7. ↑ "Former eventer dies at 51", Horse & Hound, 26 October 2000, accessed 6 September 2022
  8. ↑ "Obituary: The Earl of Cottenham", The Daily Telegraph, 26 October 2000, accessed 5 September 2022
  9. ↑ Kiwi showjumping pioneers, famous eventer Charisma honoured, Horsetalk.co.nz, 16 March 2020, accessed 6 September 2022
  10. ↑ Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage 2019 (Debrett's, 2019), p. 2173

Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl of Cottenham

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