“With his deep concern for families and antecedents he could ‘place’ almost anyone according to his or her social standing, by which standards the Fermoys were little more than rich Irish parvenus from America. He was irritated, therefore, by the favoured position Lord and Lady Fermoy had come to enjoy as friends of George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and he muttered darkly of the ‘bad blood’ of the Fermoys. As a family they were certainly different from the Spencers. As he had discovered, these Ferm...oys had no connection with the ancient Irish family of that name. That illustrious title had been long extinct when in the 1850s Edmund Burke Roche, a landowner and politician from County Cork adopted it on being awarded an Irish peerage for political services. After this, the first Lord Fermoy had suffered badly from the disorder in Ireland. Having lost his large estates in Cork and Limerick, he moved to London, and became Liberal MP for Marylebone. He was succeeded by his spendthrift son, Edward FitzEdmund Burke Roche as second Baron Fermoy.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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