Robert Sherard, the 6th and last Earl of Harborough, and 8th Baron Sherard. Robert was the father of three illegitimate sons by the actress and opera singer Emma Sarah Love Calcraft Kennedy (1801-1881) wife to Captain Granby Hales Calcraft (1802-1856). These included artist Edward Sherard Calcraft Kennedy (1833-1900) and Reverend Bennet Sherard Calcraft Kennedy, who was husband to William Wordsworth's granddaughter Jane and father of author and journalist Robert Harborough Sherard the first biographer of Oscar Wilde. Although marrying Mary Eliza Temple (1818-) in 1843 he died without legitimate issue and the Earldom and Harborough barony went extinct. The right to the Sherard barony is thought to have passed to a distant cousin, descended from the third son of the 1st Baron, though the heirs of that line never attempted to sit and thus the priority of their claim was never recorded or tested before the House of Lords prior to being rendered moot by the extinction of the male line in 1931. The cousin, Philip Castel Sherard, 9th Baron, died childless, and was succeeded in turn by the sons of his brother, Reverend Simon Haughton Sherard: Castel Sherard, 10th Baron, who was a Commander in the Royal Navy dying in 1902, and Philip Halton Sherard, 11th Baron Sherard, who died childless in 1924. The succession then fell to a second cousin, Robert Castel Sherard, a descendant of the 9th Baron's grandfather, and when the latter died childless in 1931, the title became dormant. Barons Sherard (1627) William Sherard, 1st Baron Sherard (1588–1640) Bennet Sherard, 2nd Baron Sherard (1621–1700) Bennet Sherard, 1st Earl of Harborough, Viscount Sherard, and Baron Harborough, 3rd Baron Sherard (1675–1732) Philip Sherard, 2nd Earl of Harborough and Baron Harborough, 4th Baron Sherard (1680–1750) Bennet Sherard, 3rd Earl of Harborough and Baron Harborough, 5th Baron Sherard (1709–1770) Robert Sherard, 4th Earl of Harborough and Baron Harborough, 6th Baron Sherard (1719–1799) Philip Sherard, 5th Earl of Harborough and Baron Harborough, 7th Baron Sherard (1767–1807) Robert Sherard, 6th Earl of Harborough and Baron Harborough, 8th Baron Sherard (1797–1859) Philip Castell Sherard, 9th Baron Sherard (1804–1886) Castell Sherard, 10th Baron Sherard (1849–1902) Philip Halton Sherard, 11th Baron Sherard (1851–1924) Robert Castell Sherard, 12th Baron Sherard (1858–1931) Line of Descent William Sherard, 1st Baron Sherard (1588–1640) Bennet Sherard, 2nd Baron Sherard (1621–1700) Bennet Sherard, 1st Earl of Harborough (1675–1732) Philip Sherard (1623–1695) Bennet Sherard (1649–1701) Philip Sherard, 2nd Earl of Harborough