Duke of Westminster Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor showed old money’s enduring power

Last Tuesday, the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, Britain’s wealthiest native-born citizen, died suddenly on his Lancastrian estate, at the age of 64. Control of the Grosvenor family empire has passed to his 25-year-old son, Hugh, who now becomes the seventh Duke.

Gerald Cavendish was, by all accounts, decent, but tortured. He struggled with the huge responsibilities of his position as the head of the greatest of Britain’s landed estates (leaving to one side the holdings of the country’s royal family).

Certainly, he took life more seriously than his cousin, Hugh, or ‘Bendor,’ the fourth Duke, who kept many racehorses, and mistresses, among them the famous French fashion designer, Coco Chanel.