This is the dramatic, often erratic, and at times unbelievable
story of the fortunes and misfortunes over 900 years to the present
day of one of England's premier aristocratic families, who in 1661
were given the Earldom of Essex by Charles II. This fascinating,
previously untold story begins just after the Norman Conquest with
a Hugh Capel in AD 1100 and ends at the present day, with Frederick
Paul de Vere Capell, 11th Earl of Essex and the future heir
presumptive, William Jennings Capell, a former shelf stacker, who
lives in Yuba City, California. Over a period of 400 years the
Capell family built a fortune, and over the next 500 years lost it
due to an incredible number of mistakes bad judgment calls, and
misfortunes. Lord Arthur Capel, one of England's richest men,
changed sides from Parliament to support Charles I, and after a
further series of poor decisions, was executed at Palace Yard,
Westminster at the age of 41 in 1649 by the same executioner, using
the same axe as had executed King Charles I barely three months
earlier. His son, also Arthur Capel, created 1st Earl of Essex by
Charles II became involved in a plot against the king, and was
mysteriously found with his throat cut whilst awaiting trial in the
Tower of London. Did he commit suicide to avoid the consequences of
treason and to save the estates and titles for his son? Conspiracy
theories abounded. The king commented sadly that he owed the Earl's
father had died for his father, and he owed him a life and would
have spared him. Arthur's young son became the 3rd Earl and went
down in history as `the most debauched young man in London.' The
long-lived 5th Earl had numerous mistresses and, as a close friend
of the debauched Prince Regent, shared a well-known courtesan, Mrs
Robinson with the Prince. Unhappily married, with no legitimate
male heir, living at the family seat, Cassiobury in Watford, at the
age of 81 he married secondly a 44-year-old actress and died
shortly afterwards, accompanied to the grave by some very
irreverent press comments. The three-times-married 6th Earl, whose
father was a bankrupt debauched gambler, had an illegitimate son,
George Ingerfield Capel, who had an illegitimate daughter who was
the mistress of the `Sundance Kid.' The 7th Earl, in 1892
struggling to keep Cassiobury and the family fortunes together
married a title-hunting American heiress, Adele Beach Grant, who
was not really an heiress, and who became a member of the Edwardian
`fast set'. Her alcoholic husband, known as `sulky' stepped in
front of a cab outside his London club in 1916 and was killed.
Adele was found mysteriously dead in the bath in 1922. Her step-son
the 8th Earl had eloped with and married young, and by the 1920s
the extensive family estates had to be sold. The much-married 9th
Earl died heirless in Bermuda in 1966. A contest broke out over
whom should now inherit the titles. Robert Edward de Vere Capel,
the next Earl, born in 1920 was the son of a railway parcel porter
and was a Royal Air Force flight sergeant during the Second World
War. He fought a dramatic battle to prove his right to the Earldom.
His son, Frederick Paul de Vere Capell, the 11th Earl of Essex, who
lives modestly not far from Lancaster, is a retired assistant
schoolmaster and a classical music devotee. He has no children and
unless the inheritance laws change, the title will one day go to
his American cousins in Yuba City, California.
General
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