For those with an eye for English religious history there could scarcely have been a more symbolic gesture than Tom Stonor’s appointment as Lord Chamberlain by Queen Elizabeth II. Born into one of the oldest recusant families in England, one of Stonor’s names was Campion: in honour of St Edmund Campion, who in the dark days of persecution was sheltered at Stonor Park by his ancestors and later martyred at Tyburn under Elizabeth I.
When Stonor was invited to become a Lord-in-Waiting in 1992 it was final confirmation, should any have been required, that in the second Elizabethan age there was no bar to Catholics entering royal service at the highest levels. He retired as Lord Chamberlain in 2000 because of ill-health; independently he had also served the Church as a Consultor of the Patrimony of the Holy See. For his work in both roles he respectively received the Grand Crosses of the Royal Victorian Order and the Order of St Gregory the Great.
Stonor had to help handle the backlash that ensued in the wake of the sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and pressure from both the media and New Labour for a more accessible form of monarchy that represented value-for-money for taxpayers. He was well suited to the role, for while he cut a plump and congenial figure his hinterland was in the City of London, where he had been known as hard-nosed banker with a track record of successfully driving change.
There had been no question of his simply setting into the management of the estates; Stonor Park claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously-inhabited family house in England, but his father had effectively run it into the ground. To avoid being declared bankrupt the 6th Lord Camoys had sold off most of fittings and at one point had even listed the house for sale. After Eton and Balliol (and a stint as private tutor to the then-Crown Prince Birendra of Nepal) Stonor joined Rothschilds.
His career blossomed soon enough. Rothschilds put him in charge of the dealings with NatWest that produced Rothschild International; he rose to be its chairman and oversaw its sale to American Express. He later joined Barclays Merchant Bank as managing director, and oversaw its merger with de Zoete & Bevan and Wedd Durlacher. He implemented change with an iron will that did not make him universally popular, but few could have said that he was not impressively effective.
Hard-working and hard-smoking, Stonor was only 46 when he suffered a stroke. Although he made a full recovery it ushered in a gentler way of doing business; as a deputy chairman of Barclays he travelled the globe as a kind of brand-ambassador, particularly in the Far East. He later moved to Sotheby’s – where his grand name and love of art made him a good fit – and became chairman of Jackson’s of Piccadilly. He also chaired the trustees of the Tablet.
Stonor had managed to reacquire the family seat in Oxfordshire, having succeeded his father as the 7th Lord Camoys in 1976 – the title was in abeyance between 1426 and 1839. He was duly able to refurnish Stonor Park and restore it to use as a family home with his wife, Beth, and their four children. Its ancient chapel was decorated in shades of blue and pink to a scheme drawn up by Osbert Lancaster and John Piper.
Stonor was an active member of the House of Lords until the partial ejection of the hereditary peers in 1999; he served on the European Economic Community select committee and also on the History Buildings and Monuments Commission for England. He also maintained a lifelong friendship with his former charge King Birendra until his murder in 2001.
Stonor first came to the Royal Household’s attention through his friendship with the Duke and Duchesss of Gloucester, but his nearest royal neighbours in Oxfordshire were the Duke and Duchess of Kent, whose country home is at Nettlebed, just a few miles away across the fields. It was the Duchess’s attendance at Mass in the family chapel at Stonor Park that announced her conversion to Catholicism in 1994.
In retirement Stonor remained a Privy Councillor and Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, but his later years were not without discomfort. In 2006 his elder sister Julia published an extraordinary memoir in which she claimed, among other wild things, that their mother, the Dowager Lady Camoys, had been a fervent and violent Nazi sympathiser who cuckolded her husband with a string of lovers, including Ribbentrop. For Stonor and the rest of his family it was a bizarre and distressing episode.
In later years Lord and Lady Camoys moved to a cottage on the estate, leaving the running of Stonor Park to their son, William, who now succeeds to the barony. He becomes the 29th Stonor to have the care of a house whose history is richly and inextricably intertwined with that of the Catholic Church in England.
The Lord Camoys, 16 April 1940 – 4 January 2023
Photo: Massey/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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