Obituaries Australia

Lord Carrington, soon after returning home to Millaton, Bridestowe, Devon, from a special constables’ dinner at Cullompton, near Exeter, died about midnight on Saturday, at the age of 46.

The Right Hon. Rupert Victor John Carington, fifth Baron Carrington, of Upton, Co. Nottingham, in the Peerage of Great Britain, and fifth Baron Carrington, of Bulcot Lodge, Ireland, in the Peerage of Ireland, was born on December 20, 1891, the only child of the Hon. Rupert Carington (later fourth Lord Carrington) and Edith, daughter of John Horsfall, of Widgiewa, New South Wales. During the Great War he served with the Grenadier Guards, and was wounded twice. After the war he transferred to the Reserve of Officers with the rank of captain, and he succeeded his father in the peerages on November 11, 1929. He had played a prominent part in the public affairs of Devon, and since 1931 he had been a member of Devon County Council; he was Commandant of the Devon Special Constabulary and chairman of the county A.R.P. Committee, a member of the British Legion, was past-president of the South Molton Division of the Conservative Association, and a former president of the Devon Federation of the Junior Imperial League. Lord Carrington married on May 25, 1916, the Hon. Sybil Mary Colville, daughter of the second Viscount Colville of Culross, and had issue a son and a daughter. The son, Peter Alexander Rupert, who now succeeds to the family honours, was born on June 6, 1919.

Although the family name of the Barony is Carington at the present time, the earliest recorded member of the house was John Smith, of Cropwell Boteler, in the parish of Titheby, Notts, who died in 1641. His grandson became a banker at Nottingham, and his great-grandson was the first peer. The peerage style of Carrington was probably chosen because previously an ancient family of Smith – not connected with the new line – had been ennobled in a Barony of Carrington in the seventeenth century. There have been several changes from the name of Smith in the new line. The second peer changed his family name to Carrington in 1839, and the third peer (who died Marquess of Lincolnshire) and his brothers changed the spelling of the name to Carington in 1880. G.E.C. says of this change: "It is stated in the petition that their father had altered the orthography of his (so recently assumed) name of Carrington to that of Carington prior to the birth of the petitioners, i.e., in the short period between 1839 and 1843." Other changes of name were made by the first peer’s great-uncles of their heirs. One was created a baronet and his descendants took the name of Bromley-Wilson, and the descendants of another assumed the name of Pauncefote (and of this line the late Lord Pauncefote, the diplomatist, was the last male representative). Other branches retained their patronymic of Smith, and it was a member of one of these, Major Henry Abel Smith, who married Lady May Cambridge, niece of Queen Mary, in 1931.