Henry John Cockayne-Cust, JP, DL (10 October 1861 – 2 March 1917) was an English politician and editor who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Unionist Party. Origins He was a son of Henry Cockayne-Cust, a younger grandson of Brownlow Cust, 1st Baron Brownlow, of Belton House near Grantham in Lincolnshire, by his wife Sara Jane Cookson. Career He was educated at Eton College, where he was captain of the Oppidans, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected to the Apostles and from which he graduated with second-class honours in the Classical Tripos with a Bachelor of Arts. Initially pursuing a legal career, Cust was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1888 but was not called to the bar. Instead he decided to enter Parliament, and won a by-election in 1890 for Stamford, Lincolnshire, where the Cust family had been prominent landowners and politicians for many generations. He left Parliament at the general election of 1895, but returned five years later in 1900 when he won a seat in the constituency of Bermondsey in Surrey, remaining until 1906. Meanwhile, he served as Justice of the Peace for Bedfordshire and as Deputy Lieutenant of Bedfordshire, as well as Justice of the Peace for Lincolnshire. Cust was one of The Souls and was attached to Pamela Wyndham, who later married Edward Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner. Others in the same clique were Margot Asquith, Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon, Alfred Lyttelton, Godfrey Webb, and George Wyndham. Considered a brilliant conversationalist by his contemporaries, he had a reputation as a womaniser and was the natural father of the socialite and philanthropist Lady Diana Cooper, by his mistress the Duchess of Rutland, although this was not acknowledged until much later. Cust was also rumoured to be a natural grandfather of prime minister Margaret Thatcher, through his supposed illegitimate begetting of her mother Beatrice Ethel Stephenson (born 1889), who on 28 May 1917 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Grantham (firmly within the orbit of Belton House), married Alfred Roberts, a shop-keeper in that town, the father of the prime minister. Although there was no solid proof of this connection, Lady Diana Cooper often jokingly referred to Mrs Thatcher as her niece. In 1892 Cust met William Waldorf Astor, who invited him to edit the Pall Mall Gazette. Despite lacking any background in journalism, Cust immediately accepted. He soon transformed