Edward Pelham-Clinton, 10th Duke of Newcastle


Edward Charles Pelham-Clinton, 10th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, known as Edward Pelham-Clinton until November 1988, was an English nobleman, a duke for less than two months at the end of his life, inheriting the titles from a third cousin. He had previously served in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War, during which he was once mentioned in dispatches. He later had a career as a lepidopterist.

Education and career

Pelham-Clinton was the son of Guy Edward Pelham-Clinton, an army officer and a grandson of Lord Charles Clinton, who was a younger son of Henry Pelham-Clinton, 4th Duke of Newcastle. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, and served as an officer in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War, rising to the rank of captain. His younger brother, Alastair Pelham-Clinton, was a Royal Air Force Flying Officer and died in 1943 aged twenty.
An expert lepidopterist, from 1960 to 1980 Pelham-Clinton was Deputy Keeper of the Royal Scottish Museum, in Edinburgh.. He acted as an associate editor of six volumes of the series The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland.

Brief succession to dukedom and earldom

Pelham-Clinton succeeded his third cousin in the earldom and dukedom in November 1988. He died one month and 21 days later, aged 68, unmarried. As all other heirs male from the second duke's line had died, the dukedom became extinct, but his title of Earl of Lincoln was inherited by a very distant kinsman. He left an estate valued for probate at £2,222,203,, and his stated usual abode was Furzeleigh House, Axminster.