Esmond Romilly

Esmond Marcus David Romilly (10 June 1918 – 30 November 1941) was a British socialist and anti-fascist, now remembered mainly for his marriage to Jessica Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters. He was born to a family of public service and aristocratic descent, but at a young age became a communist.

Romilly was born in Huntingdon Park in Herefordshire, the son of Colonel Bertram Romilly, a soldier with a distinguished record in World War I and governor of Galilee in 1919–20, when the country was under British military government, before it came under the British Mandate of Palestine. The Romillys were of Huguenot (French Protestant) origin and settled in England in 1701. Esmond's mother was Nellie Hozier, daughter of Colonel Sir Henry Montague Hozier (1838–1907) and Lady Henrietta Blanche Hozier (1852–1925), eldest daughter of David Graham Drummond Ogilvy, 10th Earl of Airlie. Nellie's sister Clementine married Winston Churchill, making Romilly the nephew by marriage of one of Britain's most prominent politicians. In 1923 another cousin, Hon. Charles Carnegie, had married Princess Maud, Countess of Southesk, a granddaughter of king Edward VII.

It was frequently rumoured that the Hozier children were not fathered by Sir Henry, but rather by one of Henrietta's many lovers. Possible candidates for the paternity of Nellie and Clementine Hozier include Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, poet and anti-colonialist, or Capt. William George "Bay" Middleton, a noted horseman — Mary Soames, Clementine’s youngest child, takes this view. According to Clementine Churchill’s biographer, the father was Lord Redesdale, the husband of Henrietta's sister Clementina and grandfather of Esmond Romilly's future wife Jessica Mitford. If Redesdale was indeed Nellie Romilly's biological father, then Esmond’s mother and Jessica’s father were half-siblings. Jessica Mitford suggested in more than one letter to her family that Romilly might have been the illegitimate son of Winston Churchill, stating that she thought her late husband had resembled him.

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