John Skeffington succeeded his father,
John Whyte-Melville-Skeffington, 13th Viscount Massereene, in 1992 and regularly attended the
House of Lords (where he sat under the title
Baron Oriel, his
Irish Viscountcies not entitling him to a seat) until the passage of the
House of Lords Act 1999 which ended the automatic right for hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords. Lord Massereene stood unsuccessfully as a
UKIP candidate in a
House of Lords by-election in 2013. Educated at
Millfield and the
Institute Monte Rosa, he served in the
Grenadier Guards regiment 1958–1961. He is a major landowner, holds various directorships, and is a stockbroker with M.D.Barnard & Co; member of the
London Stock Exchange 1961–1964, and from 1970 to the present. He married in 1970, to Ann Denise Rowlandson. The couple have two sons, including
Charles Skeffington (his heir), and one daughter. Lord Massereene oversaw the sale of
Chilham Castle in 1996, the family's ancestral home in Kent; the family seat is now at High Northolme,
Salton, North Yorkshire. Like his father, he was President of the
Conservative Monday Club, and was a patron of
Right Now!, a magazine edited by
Derek Turner. He also participated on the council of
The Freedom Association and was a to
The Sanity Petition ("Sanity" is an acronym for "
Subjects
Against the
NIce
Treat
Y"). Lord Massereene died from sepsis and pneumonia on 13 November 2024, at the age of 84. ==Sources==