The first baron represented
County Cork and then
Marylebone in the British
House of Commons, taking the
Chiltern Hundreds the day the spurious 1855 patent was issued. He also served as
Lord Lieutenant of County Cork. His younger son, the third baron, sat as an Irish nationalist
Member of Parliament for
Kerry East. He was succeeded by his son, the fourth baron, who represented
King's Lynn in parliament as a
Conservative. The title is currently held by his grandson, the sixth Baron Fermoy, who succeeded his father in 1984. The family seat is Nethercote House, near Nethercote,
Warwickshire. The first baron was named after his relative
Edmund Burke.
Royal connections Diana, Princess of Wales, was a great-great-granddaughter of the 1st Baron Fermoy through her mother,
Frances Shand Kydd. Shand Kydd was the younger daughter of
Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy, a friend of
King George VI and the elder of the twin sons of the American heiress
Frances Ellen Work and her first husband,
James Boothby Burke Roche, who, after their divorce, became the 3rd Baron Fermoy. Diana's maternal grandmother,
Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, was a confidante and lady-in-waiting to
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the founder of the annual
King's Lynn Festival (of classical music) in
Norfolk, England. ==Barons Fermoy==