Matthew Henry Herbert Ponsonby, 2nd Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede (26 July 1904 – 29 April 1976) was a British peer.
Matthew Ponsonby, 2nd Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 July 1904 |
| Died | 29 April 1976 (aged 71) |
| Education | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Bigham |
| Children | 5, including Thomas |
| Parents |
|
| Relatives | Elizabeth Ponsonby (sister) Henry Ponsonby (grandfather) Hubert Parry (grandfather) David Plunket Greene (cousin) |
Life
editPonsonby was the son of Arthur Ponsonby, by his marriage to Dorothea Parry. He was educated at Leighton Park School and Balliol College, Oxford.[1]
Ponsonby had some difficulty with the Responsions to get into Oxford and had to be tutored for them, not arriving at Balliol until 1923, when he was nineteen.[2] At the University, he became a friend of Evelyn Waugh, with whom in 1925 he was arrested by the police, while the two of them were on a pub crawl and Ponsonby was driving the wrong way along Oxford Street while drunk. Ponsonby later lost his driving licence and was fined £23 9s, then a large sum.[3] [4] Another university friend, Anthony Powell, recalled of Ponsonby's sister Elizabeth that she was "something of a gossip-column heroine of what came later to be looked on as the Vile Bodies world."[5] Unlike his sister, he remained fond of their parents' country house, Shulbrede Priory, and enthusiastically took part in the archaeological digs there of his father and Charles Strachey.[2] At Oxford he was friend of Arden Hilliard, the son of the Bursar of Balliol College, Oxford.[6]
Ponsonby married Elizabeth Mary Bigham (1905-1985), a daughter of Clive Bigham, 2nd Viscount Mersey, and they had five children: Thomas Arthur Ponsonby, later 3rd Baron (1930–1990); William Nicholas Ponsonby (1933–1942); Laura Mary Ponsonby (1935–2016); Rose Magdalen Ponsonby (born 1940) and Catherine Virginia Ponsonby (born 1944).[1]
In 1930, Ponsonby’s father was created Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, a peerage to which he succeeded on the death of his father in March 1946, giving him a seat in the House of Lords. In 1955 he became a Justice of the Peace for West Sussex and he also became a member of the council of the Royal College of Music.[1]
Arms
edit
Ponsonby’s coat of arms is blazoned Gules a chevron between three combs argent. The crest, out of a ducal coronet, is azure three arrows, point downwards, one in pale and two in saltire, entwined at the intersection by a snake proper. The motto is “Pro Rege Lege Grege”, meaning For the King, the Law, and the People,[7]
Notes
edit- ^ a b c Burke's Peerage, vol. 3 (2003), p. 3171
- ^ a b Raymond A. Jones, Arthur Ponsonby: the politics of life (1989), p. 133
- ^ John Howard Wilson, Evelyn Waugh: 1924-1966
- ^ John Howard Wilson, in Donat Gallagher, Ann Pasternak Slater, A Handful of Mischief: New Essays on Evelyn Waugh, (London: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2011), p. 40
- ^ Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling: Infants of the spring (Heinemann, 1976), p. 158
- ^ Powell, Anthony (2001). To Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoirs of Anthony Powell. University of Chicago Press. p. 86. ISBN 9780226677217. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
- ^ Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage (2000)