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Major General Lord Monckton of Brenchley, 1915-2006

Knight Grand Cross of Obedience of the Order of Malta

Maj-Gen the 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who has died aged 90, was awarded an MC in 1940 and later became director of Army public relations at a time when the Armed Forces’ public profile was growing in importance.

At 50 he retired early to run his 350-acre farm in Kent and to join the boards of a series of firms to help pay for the education of his five children. In the House of Lords he became a persistent critic of the neglect of rural and military interests, and took a lifelong interest in archaeology and water divining.

The sole Roman Catholic trustee of a £3 million appeal for Canterbury Cathedral in 1974, Monckton was president of the British Association of the Sovereign Order of Malta, and helped to ease strained relations with its Anglican counterpart, the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem, by taking part in ecumenical services.

He also played a key role in forming the Order of Malta Volunteers, who aid the sick at the shrine of Lourdes, and in setting up trust care homes with the Venerable Order.


Gilbert Walter Riversdale Monckton was born on November 3 1915 at Ightham Mote, a manor house near Sevenoaks, Kent, where he and his sister used to chase guinea pigs around the garden with bows and arrows.

His father Walter, the 1st Viscount, was an adviser to King Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936 and later a Conservative minister in the 1950s and 1960s. [Ed.: Walter Monckton drafted Edward VIII’s Instrument of Abdication]

Young Gilbert was educated at Harrow before reading Agriculture at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he converted to Roman Catholicism under the influence of Monsignor Alfred Gilbey.

This led him to become a founder member of the Strafford Club, in honour of Charles I’s minister who was beheaded for alleged subversion, and also to discover his talent as a diviner.

He used to win bets in pubs by playing a game in which he was challenged to find a signet ring under one of four caps; when friends tried to trick him by putting rings under every cap his rod defeated them by saying yes at each one.

After being commissioned into the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards in 1938, Monckton went to France with the British Expeditionary Force when war broke out. On May 18 1940 he was on the Dyle river in Belgium, commanding a troop which was engaged by a strong force of enemy armoured cars, motorcyclists and anti-tank guns.

As the units on his right were forced to withdraw, he was ordered to remain where he was, with result that his troop was surrounded.

But he fought his way out of this dangerous position and prevented a much more serious situation developing. For this action he was awarded an immediate MC.

It was around this time that General Alexander strode past, immaculately turned out and oblivious of the bullets whizzing about his head.

Stopping at Monckton’s trench, he asked how things were going, then said: “You ought to smarten up a bit. Get a shave, for instance, and the next time you pass a barber’s shop – don’t!”

After the Dunkirk evacuation, Monckton was engaged in air liaison duties before going to Staff College in 1941. He served with an armoured brigade as brigade major, and then attended the Command and General Staff School in the United States.

On transferring to the 3rd King’s Own Hussars in 1944 he served as a squadron leader in Italy and Syria.

The following year he rejoined the Inniskillings in Schleswig-Holstein, where contemporaries recall his many and varied dogs, the armorial designs which covered his walls at Münster and Paderborn, and his habits of wearing Arab dress and preparing his own brew of Arab coffee.

In 1949 Monckton went to the RAF Staff College before being posted to the 7th Armoured Division as GSO2.

The following year, he married Marianna Laetitia, daughter of Commander Robert Bower, with whom he was to have four sons and daughter. On the birth of each, the Strafford Club would send a telegram with their motto – “Thorough”.

He went with the Inniskillings to Korea, where he commanded “A” Squadron, and subsequently served as second-in-command.

On one occasion Monckton and his men put up a sign, declaring “Enemy Ahead”, then hid and watched some Americans drive to a halt and abandon their Jeep, ready to be claimed by the Inniskillings. His CO was considered to have shown some forbearance in putting up with his menagerie of indigenous hens – all of them non-layers.

Monckton next accompanied his regiment to the Suez Canal Zone, where the climate so affected his health that he had to take six months’ sick leave, during which he resolved always to have a chapel in his home if he recovered.

He then moved to the Military Operations Directorate at the War Office as GSO1 and acted as military adviser to the British delegation at the Geneva Convention on French Indo-China and Korea, and commanded the 12th Royal Lancers before becoming commander, Royal Armoured Corps, at HQ 3rd Division.

In 1962 he returned to the War Office as deputy director of personnel administration and was promoted major-general the following year on his appointment as director of public relations.

It was a time when the growing inquisitiveness of the press was a matter for considerable bewilderment and suspicion in the military mind. He found himself driven to complain that the television portrayal of officers in dramas was 200 years out of date; and when he appeared on Panorama the cameras broke down four times.

Then a fire broke out in his office because its electricity system was overloaded by the cameras. There was a long-running row on his retirement about whether his replacement should be a major-general.

On succeeding to the viscountcy in 1965, Monckton dispatched his father’s personal correspondence with King Edward VIII to Buckingham Palace, and served on as Chief of Staff at HQ BAOR, before retiring in 1967 to join the boards of the Anglo-Portuguese Bank, Burberrys and Ransomes.

His maiden speech in the House of Lords contained a warning against reducing the size of the Army in Germany too sharply, and from then on he was a frequent critic of both Labour and Conservative governments for their neglect of rural interests and the Armed Forces.

The poor official response he received eventually led him to resign the Tory whip and move to the crossbenches. When he lost his seat in Tony Blair’s constitutional reforms during the Hunting Bill, his manifesto for election to the House supported the muzzling of cats to stop the torture of mice.

On settling in his 15th-century home near Maidstone, he established a chapel in the old milking parlour and became a parish councillor.

He was colonel of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers and honorary colonel of the Kent and Sharpshooters Yeomanry Squadron as well as president of the Anglo-Belgian Union and of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies.

Monckton bought an automated mini-digger to excavate Stone Age and Roman artefacts and used his dowsing talents to discover several wells on the farm, where he would relax his military standards of smartness and wander round sporting baler twine around his waist.

Gilbert Monckton, who died on June 22, was appointed OBE in 1956, CB in 1966 and served as Deputy Lieutenant of Kent from 1970.

From the Daily Telegraph, via Bruce Patterson (Saguenay Herald, Canada), who also informs us “Lord Monckton was President of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies (established by Cecil Humphery-Smith in Canterbury in 1961) from 1964 to 2000. As President of the the International Congress of Heraldic and Genealogical Sciences (XIII) in London in 1976, he was also a member of the Bureau permanent of the congresses.”

Published at 1:58 pm on Tuesday 4 July 2006. Categories: Great Britain Military Order of Malta People Tags: .
Comments

I met the distinguished old man some years ago at the annual banquet of the Order of Malta in London: I’ve never seen more (authentic) stars on anybody’s breast before or since.
Another of the many splendid converts due to the gentle, seductive priest who was Alfred Gilbey.

— L Gaylord Clark 4 Jul 2006 2:57 pm

I served with the then mjr monckton in A sqdrn 5 dg from 1948 to 1950 and often fed his dogs fiesal & shereen, I still have a large photo of the full sqdrn taken in paderborn barker bks I shall always remember him as the typical english officer and gentleman

— tpr j h fish 6 Mar 2007 7:41 pm

I remember Mr.Monkton he joined the regt at about the same time as me in 1938 at Colchester he was always up to something.although I was in H.Q.sqdn we all got to know about his tricks sadly my memory and age defeats me now but along with Gen.Blacker I remember them both. my best wishes to the family he left behind,

ps. I was also a Kent man.

— VJR.Waghorn 13 Apr 2007 8:55 am

add to Blacker.
I last met Gen.Blacker in the early eighties he was competing as usual. Equine show at Crystal Palace he remembered me as his D R Troop NCO we had quite a long chat over past and present times

— VJR Waghorn 22 Feb 2008 7:59 am

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