Charles Carnegie, 10th Earl of Southesk

Charles Noel Carnegie, 10th Earl of Southesk JP DL (20 March 1854 – 10 November 1941), was a Scottish nobleman.

Early life Carnegie was the son of the explorer and poet James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk and his first wife Catherine Hamilton Noel, daughter of the Charles Noel, 1st Earl of Gainsborough. He had three older sisters, Lady Arabella Charlotte (wife of Samuel Romilly), Lady Constance Mary (wife of Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin) and Lady Beatrice Diana Cecilia Diana Cecillia (wife of the Rev. Henry Holmes Stewart). After his mother's death in 1855 at the age of twenty-six, his father remarried to Lady Susan Catherine Mary Murray (eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Dunmore) in 1860.

Career

Amongst his various offices, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the part-time Forfar and Kincardine Artillery Militia in 1872 and steadily progressed through the officer ranks until he became the Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant in 1894, with the honorary rank of Colonel. He retired from the command in 1906. He also served as a Deputy Lieutenant for Angus, Aberdeenshire, and Kincardineshire from 5 January 1900. He held the office of Justice of the Peace for Aberdeenshire and for Angus. In 1905, he succeeded his father as the 10th Earl of Southesk who had restored the family titles, with the original precedence, by reversal of the 1715 Act of Attainder in 1855. Lord Southesk rebuilt the castle. A prominent art collector, he owned "a large collection of paintings by old masters and antique gems." Together, they had five children, three sons and two daughters:

Lady Katherine Ethel Carnegie (b. 1892), who married Maj. Arthur Rivers Bosanquet MC (1890–1971), eldest son and heir of Richard Arthur Bosanquet and Ruth Rivers Thompson (eldest daughter of Sir Augustus Rivers Thompson, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal), in 1917. They divorced in 1940. second daughter of Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife and Louise, Princess Royal, eldest daughter of King Edward VII, in 1923. Hon. Alexander Bannerman Carnegie (1894–1989), a Commander in the Royal Navy who married his cousin Susan Ottilia de Rodakowski-Rivers (d. 1968), a daughter of Maj. Ernest de Rodakowski-Rivers and Lady Dora Susan Carnegie (eldest daughter by his second wife of James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk), in 1919. After her death, he married Cynthia Averil Gurney, the former wife of Capt. Alexander Hugh Gurney and eldest daughter of Brig. Harold Vincent Spencer Charrington of Winchfield House, in 1969. Hon. James Duthac Carnegie (1910–1996), a Maj. in the British Army who married Claudia Katharine Angela Blackburn (d. 2001), the youngest daughter of Robert Blackburn, Lord Blackburn a Lord of Session and Lady Constance Frances Bowes-Lyon (eldest daughter of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne), in 1935.

Lord Southesk died on 10 November 1941 at Kinnaird Castle near Brechin, County Angus. Lady Southesk died on 10 December 1947.

Descendants Through his eldest son, he was a grandfather of James George Alexander Bannerman Carnegie, who succeeded his maternal aunt, Princess Arthur of Connaught, suo jure Duchess of Fife, as the 3rd Duke of Fife in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1959 because her only child, Alastair, 2nd Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, had predeceased her. In 1992, the Duke became the 12th Earl of Southesk in the Peerage of Scotland.

In popular culture He and his wife are briefly mentioned in the successful British television series Downton Abbey, in which they are mentioned as paying their respects to the fictitious Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern), following their attendance of a family funeral.