Anthony David Brand, 6th Viscount Hampden

Anthony David Brand, 6th Viscount Hampden (7 May 1937 – 4 January 2008), was a stock broker, Sussex land owner, South Downsman, hereditary peer, and land agent.

Early career

Anthony Brand was the son of the cricketer and financier David Brand, 5th Viscount Hampden (1902–1975) by his wife Imogen Alice Rhys, daughter of the Walter Rice, 7th Baron Dynevor. He had two younger sisters. He succeeded his father in 1975.

Educated at Eton and a member of White's, he married in 1969, Cara Fiona (marriage dissolved 1988), elder daughter of Claud Proby (they had two sons and one daughter); he married secondly in 1993, Mrs Sally Snow, daughter of Sir Charles Hambro of Hambros Bank.

He was at Lazard Brothers, merchant bankers, from 1956–69; and Hoare Govett, stockbrokers, from 1970–82. His uncle the 4th Viscount (1900–1965) had been managing director of Lazards from 1931–1965. Meanwhile his father had been chairman of the English, Scottish and Australian Bank from 1948 to c1972.

Glynde Estates

Subsequently he was estate manager of his own c6,000 acres, Glynde Estates, 1984–2002. Much of these and the flint faced Elizabethan (1569) mansion house Glynde Place he had inherited from a second cousin (twice removed), Humphrey Brand (1895–1953), and his widow in c1953 and 1978. (He had married Aimée, aka Poss, on 24 January 1940. The younger daughter of Sir Rupert Clarke, she by her first husband is grandmother of the present Baron Gerard, etal.). Humphrey Brand was the son of Admiral the Hon. Thomas Seymour Brand (1847-1916), who was second son of the 1st Viscount, "Mr. Speaker Brand". (There had been a 1851 provision that the holder of the Barony of Dacre should always relinquish the Glynde estate in favour of the junior line; however, with the separation of the Dacre barony and the Hampden viscountcy in 1965 this arrangement would have lapsed, if it had not already).

Glynde is a few miles north-east of Lewes, between Glyndebourne and Firle. Another part of the estate is at Mayfield, within Rother and the Weald; where the author Pamela Travers, creator of Mary Poppins, was once a tenant.

Glynde Place, which the Welsh Trevor family inherited in 1679, owes much of its present condition to an ancestral uncle, Richard Trevor (1701–1771), Prince Bishop of Durham from 1752 to 1771, who wintered there after 1744. Bishop Trevor is otherwise remembered today for having endowed in 1756 the Bishop's Palace, Auckland Castle, which he had had re-modeled from 1760, with the series of 12 (of the 13) portraits of Jacob and his sons which Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664) had painted in 1640.Glynde is home not only a fine portrait of the Prince-Bishop by Thomas Hudson but to the "Apotheosis of King James I" (1629-30), an 37.5 x 25 inches oil-on-wood sketch Rubens (1577-1640) made as preparation for his Banqueting House (Whitehall, Westminster) ceiling scheme. With some associated sketches it has been on loan (number L79) to the National Gallery since 1981. That picture had been acquired by Bishop Trevor's elder brother, Robert (1706–83), or by one of his nephews, the 2nd and 3rd (and last) viscounts Hampden (first creation). [thought somewhere to be the 2nd] .

Other affiliations

Lord Hampden was Chairman of the Sussex Branch Country Landowners Association, 1985-87 (President, 2003–?); and of South East Region, Historic Houses Association (HHA), 2001–05.He became a Deputy Lieutenant for East Sussex in 1986.

Hampden was on the Governing Body of Battersea's Emanuel School, 1985–2004, and was a Governor from 1965–2005. The school has a strong family connection, having been co-founded by an ancestral aunt, Anne (d. 1595), daughter of Sir Richard Sackville, the wife of the 10th Baron Dacre. (Hampden's uncle, the 4th Lord Hampden, was the 26th Baron Dacre (created by writ 1321). On the uncle's death in 1965 that barony fell into temporary abeyance (til 1970) between sisters, while Anthony Hampden's father inherited the viscountcy).

Literary work

He produced two books: Henry and Eliza, 1980; and A Glimpse of Glynde, 1997."Henry and Eliza" is a collection of letters between Speaker Brand, the 1st Viscount Hampden (second creation) (and the 23rd Lord Dacre for about two years), and his wife, Eliza (1818–99), who was the daughter of general Robert Ellice by his wife Eliza Courtney (1792–1859); who in turn was Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire's love-child by Charles, 2nd Earl Grey. A younger son of a younger son Henry Bouverie Brand, "Speaker Brand", had inherited Glynde from his uncle Thomas, 20th Lord Dacre (1774–1851) in 1851.

Hampden in the House of Lords

Hampden was a rarely attending cross-bencher. However, the ten or so speeches he made there were marked by clarity and charm.His maiden speech was during a debate on the "state of the forestry industry", 14 December 1977.

Susequent speeches were on:"Profit sharing : The Finance Bill", 22 February 1978:::wherein he warned of the short-comings of share offers, as all but an inefficient form of cash bonus or as potentially causing bitterness in employees if the share price then fell;

in the "Education bill", 17 July 1979, he spoke as 'governor of a south London school called Emanuel': - ::'...It [Emanuel] is flourishing and doing well, but it is not carrying out the policy for which it was founded, which was to look after poor boys...a consequence of having had to become independent after falling out with the ILEA, which had tried to merge it with another school...';

during a "Motion : Unemployment", 12 December 1982:::'...I declare a small interest in that I employ a few people-not many but a few. I am happy to say that in the years of recession, over the last five or six years, they have remained constant. We have made no-one redundant. When a man has retired we have replaced him with a younger man. It was not absolutely necessary. We thought that it was the right thing to do...';

during the "Financial services bill", 11 July 1986:::'...I spent some 30 years in the City (I do not work there any longer) starting in 1957, ...'.

Later speeches concerned the South Downs, the Schools Bill, Housing, and the Hailsham cattle market.

He made his last Lords' speech on 21 May 1999 in the second reading debate of Lord Renton of Mount Harry's Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Bill.

The House of Lords Act 1999 deprived him of his seat. On 26th October 1999 he was one of the 81 peers who voted, at the conclusion of its third reading, against the Motion "whether the Bill do now pass?"

He was succeeded by his elder son; Hon. Francis Anthony Brand (who was born 17 September 1970); who married in 2004, Dr Caroline Pryor, daughter of His Honour Robert Charles Pryor.

References

* The Times, 12 February 1953, a correspondent writes an obituary of:-"Mr. Humphrey Brand", (page 10, column E).
* Anthony Hampden, "Henry and Eliza", printed privately in Haywards Heath, 1980 (197 pages, paperback).
* Anthony Hampden, "A Glimpse of Glynde", "The History of England Through the Eyes of a Sussex Village", ISBN: 185776188X, Hardback, Book Guild Ltd, 1997.
* "Who's Who", 2008.
* [http://www.a2a.org.uk/search/index.asp a2a.org.uk ] (access to archives); sub Brand of the Hoo, Kimpton, and Glynde.
* An [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/14/db1404.xml obituary] in "The Daily Telegraph", 14 February 2008.
* An obituary in "Historic Houses Association Magazine", Summer 2008, by Andrew Wells, page 22.

External links

* [http://www.glynde.co.uk/ Glynde Estates website]
* [http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=l79 Glynde's "Apotheosis of James I"]
* [http://www.roughwood.net/ChurchAlbum/EastSussex/Glynde/GlyndeStMary2004.htm St. Mary's church at Glynde]
* [http://www.william1.co.uk/w117.htm Some Brand/Dacre] and associated genealogy from 1715.
* [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldhansrd/vo990521/text/90521-07.htm#90521-07_spnew2 Hampden's last House of Lords speech] , 21 May 1999.