LORD Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton, the premier baron of England who has died aged 83, was head of one of the oldest Roman Catholic families in the country.
The 26th Baron Mowbray (created 1283), the 27th Baron Segrave (created 1283), and the 23rd Baron Stourton (created 1448), Charles Edward Stourton was born at Allerton Castle, near Knaresborough, the family's vast Gothic-style mansion now owned by the Rolph Foundation.
As the last surviving direct descendant of one of the 25 signatories of the Magna Carta, he was invited in 1976 to join a British parliamentary delegation which presented one of the four copies of the document held in the British Museum to the American Congress in Washington.
Educated at Ampleforth and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read History – which remained a life-long passion – he joined the Army in 1942, was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards the next year and served with the 2nd Armoured Battalion as lieutenant. He was wounded at Caen in 1944 and lost an eye, thereafter wearing the eye patch which would have made him instantly recognisable in any gathering even in the absence of his distinctive bearing and walrus moustache.
His speech with its lisp and slight stutter also distinguished him, but what made him most memorable for those who met him were his kindly manner and cheerful disposition.
He won deep affection, and so many friends that he had over 40 godchildren.
Invalided out of the Army, he ran a pig farm on the family estate at Knaresborough, and was so proud of his animals that after dinner was liable to conduct his guests on a tour of their sties.
In 1953 he married Jane de Yarburgh-Bateson, daughter of the 5th Lord Deramore. Her brother, Richard, died aged 98 in August (Yorkshire Post obituary, August 26).
The same year he was Gold Stick Officer at the Coronation. From 1954 to 1959 he served as a councillor on Nidderdale Rural District Council.
His father, the 25th Baron, was a very peculiar man who became famously eccentric. But long before then, his wife found him impossible to live with and was granted a decree of judicial separation on the ground of his cruelty. It was a highly unpleasant episode in which the 25th Lord Mowbray accused Charles of conspiring with her against him. When he died in 1965, he left the bulk of the estate to his eldest grandson, Edward, now the 27th Baron.
The castle itself was sold in the 1980s.
On inheriting the titles, if not the family's lands, Charles became a dutiful and popular member of the House of Lords where he served as a Tory Whip for 13 years and as a Government spokesman on the Environment
In 1999 his fellow peers elected him as one of the 90 hereditaries to survive the Labour Government's reform.
His first wife, Jane, died in 1998. His second wife, Joan, Lady Holland, the widow of Sir Guy Holland, survives him with the two sons, Edward and James, of his first marriage.
He is succeeded in the Mowbray titles by Edward