John Skeffington, 14th Viscount Massereene

John David Clotworthy Whyte-Melville Foster Skeffington, 14th Viscount Massereene and 7th Viscount Ferrard (born 3 June 1940) is a British peer. He succeeded his father 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 resulted in the recission of voting rights from most hereditary peers in the House of Lords in 1999.

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 has two sons, including Charles Skeffington (his heir), and one daughter.

Lord Massereene oversaw the sale of Chilham Castle, the family's ancestral home; it was originally put on the market in 1994, but was only sold (for a substantially lower sum of money) in 1996.

Like his father, he is 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 signatory, as "Baron Oriel" to The Sanity Petition ("Sanity" is an acronym for "Subjects Against the NIce TreatY" [sic])^[1]

Sources

The Times and Sunday Times online archives

References

1. ^ The Sanity Petition

Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by John Whyte-Melville-Skeffington	Viscount Massereene and Ferrard 1992–present	Incumbent

Persondata
Name	Massereene, John Skeffington, 14th Viscount
Alternative names	Whyte-Melville Foster Skeffington, John David Clotworthy, 14th Viscount Massereene and 7th Viscount Ferrard
Short description	British noble
Date of birth	3 June 1940
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death

[[[Category:Conservative Party (UK) peers]]