Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley, (17 June 1939 – 5 September 2022) was a British peer, author, and monarchist. In 1941, at the age of two, he succeeded his first cousin once removed, Richard Hanbury-Tracy, 6th Baron Sudeley, to the Barony of Sudeley and until the House of Lords Act 1999 sat as a hereditary peer. A member of the Conservative Party all his adult life, he was sometimes President and also Chairman of the Conservative Monday Club for seventeen years. He was Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League, and President of the Traditional Britain Group. Early life and education Merlin Hanbury-Tracy was born on 17 June 1939 to Captain Michael Hanbury-Tracy, a Scots Guards officer, who died from wounds received at Dunkirk, and Colline Annabel, only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Collis George Herbert St. Hill, the Royal North Devon Hussars, commander of the 2/5 battalion of Sherwood Foresters, who was also killed by a sniper at Villers-Plouich, France, on 8 July 1917. Sudeley's paternal grandfather, Lieutenant Felix Hanbury-Tracy, also an officer in the Scots Guards, was killed attacking German positions near Fromelles on 19 December 1914. Sudeley was educated at Eton, and later graduated in History from Worcester College, Oxford. Sudeley has also lectured at the University of Bristol. He served his National Service obligations in the ranks of the Scots Guards. Political activity Sudeley served as an active member of the House of Lords for 39 years (from the age of 21, the minimum age one can take one's seat), introducing several measures, most notably the debate to prevent the unlicensed export of historical manuscripts and, in 1981, a Bill to uphold the Book of Common Prayer, which was cleared on Second Reading. He was one of the hereditary peers expelled from the Upper House by the House of Lords Act 1999. He spoke out against the reform of the Lords, asking, "If it isn't broken why mend it?" He also said that since he believed inherited titles were "inextricably" tied to the monarchy that it was "odd that they just want to touch one institution and not the other". He also cited the wealth of experience that the Lords had built up. In 1985 he was elected a Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League. Since the early 1970s, Sudeley had been active in the Conservative Monday Club of which he became president in February 1991. He