Baron de Mauley

Baron de Mauley, of Canford in the County of Dorset, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1838 for the Whig politician the Hon. William Ponsonby, who had earlier represented Poole, Knaresborough and Dorset in the House of Commons. He was the third son of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and the husband of Lady Barbara Ashley-Cooper, one of the co-heirs to the ancient barony by writ of Mauley (or Maulay), which superseded the feudal barony the caput of which was at Mulgrave Castle, Yorkshire, which barony by writ had become extinct in 1415. His son, later the second Baron, sat as Member of Parliament for Poole and Dungarvon. As of 2009 the title is held by the latter's great-great-grandson, the seventh Baron, who succeeded his uncle in 2002. He is one of the ninety elected hereditary peers that remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, and sits as a Conservative. He was elected in 2005 and thereby became the first hereditary peer having succeeded to his title after the House of Lords Act of 1999, to have obtained an elective hereditary peers seat in the House of Lords. As a descendant of the third Earl of Bessborough, Lord de Mauley is also in remainder to the earldom of Bessborough and its subsidiary titles.