Kenelm Charles Everard Digby Pepys, 8th Earl of Cottenham (27 November 1948 – 20 October 2000) was an English peer, baronet, cricketer, equestrian, business man, and designer. Known until 1968 as Viscount Crowhurst, he was later known to his friends as Charlie Cottenham. He was a member of the House of Lords from 1969 until 1999.
The son of Digby Pepys, 7th Earl of Cottenham, and his wife Lady Angela Larnach-Nevill, a daughter of Guy Larnach-Nevill, 4th Marquess of Abergavenny, he was a second cousin seven times removed of the diarist Samuel Pepys and was educated at Eton College.
On 12 May 1968, aged nineteen, he succeeded his father as Earl of Cottenham, Viscount Crowhurst, of Crowhurst, Surrey, Baron Cottenham, of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, and as a Baronet, of Wimpole Street. The family seat was then at Priory Manor, near Kington St Michael, Wiltshire.Peter W. Hammond, ed., The Complete Peerage, Vol. XIV (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998), p. 210"Cottenham 8th Earl of" in Jonathan Parker, ed., Debrett's People of Today (1995), p. 440 On 15 March 1975 Cottenham married Sarah Lombard-Hobson, daughter of Captain Samuel Richard Le Hunte Lombard-Hobson CVO OBE RN, of Sherrington.Burke's Peerage, Vol. 1 (2003), p. 911
Cottenham played cricket for Eton and for Northamptonshire Second XI as a fast bowler.Wisden 2001, p. 1579. He toured the West Indies in 1970 with the Duke of Norfolk's XI."Duke of Norfolk's Side in West Indies, 1970", Wisden 1971, pp. 922–25. He was a three day eventer, competing at Badminton and Burghley Horse Trials, and representing Great Britain overseas. He gave up competing after his wife had a bad fall."Former eventer dies at 51", Horse & Hound, 26 October 2000, accessed 6 September 2022"Obituary: The Earl of Cottenham", The Daily Telegraph, 26 October 2000, accessed 5 September 2022 In 1984, after retiring from eventing, Cottenham lent his yard at Priory Manor to his friend Mark Todd, who brought with him his horse Charisma.Mark Todd, Second Chance: The Autobiography (2012), pp. 30–31 They won an Olympic gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.Kiwi showjumping pioneers, famous eventer Charisma honoured, Horsetalk.co.nz, 16 March 2020, accessed 6 September 2022
Cottenham ran a successful chain of English-language schools.
He and his wife had three children: Lady Georgina Marye Pepys (born 1981) Mark John Henry Pepys, 9th Earl of Cottenham (born 1983), m. Juan Du, of Kunming, China Charlie Thomas Pepys, Viscount Crowhurst (born 2020) Hon. Sam Richard Pepys (born 1986)
In 2007, Cottenham's widow married Richard George Ford, a kinsman of Viscount Hampden.Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage 2019 (Debrett's, 2019), p. 2173
References
External links