Background
He was the son of George Child Villiers, 8th Earl of Jersey and gave one of the family seats, Osterley Park, to the British nation in the late 1940s. James Donald Diarmid Ogilvy, son of David Lyulph Gore Wolseley Ogilvy.
He was the son of George Child Villiers, 8th Earl of Jersey and gave one of the family seats, Osterley Park, to the British nation in the late 1940s. James Donald Diarmid Ogilvy, son of David Lyulph Gore Wolseley Ogilvy.
The 9th Earl was responsible for the remodelling of the family seat, Middleton Park in Oxfordshire, and employed Edwin Lutyens as architect. When he tried to give Middleton to the National Trust, they refused on the grounds that the house had been remodelled by Lutyens – whose houses they now seek particularly. The 9th Earl gave Osterley Park in Hounslow to the nation in the late 1940s.
He said of that house, "it took a trained staff of 12 to bring me a boiled egg in the morning, and the egg was always cold by the time it got to me!" He moved to Radier Manor in Jersey shortly after, where he lived with Bianca until his death.
Bianca died in March 2005. Under one legitimist theory, Villiers was the rightful King of England, as the ultimate heir to Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven.