Cecil Knatchbull-Hugessen, 4th Baron Brabourne
Cecil Marcus Knatchbull-Hugessen, 4th Baron Brabourne was an English cricketer, and later a British peer.
Knatchbull-Hugessen was born in Lowndes Square in Chelsea, the fourth child and second son of Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron Brabourne and his first wife, Anna Maria Elizabeth Southwell. He was educated at Eton College where he was in the cricket XI from 1881 to 1883. He went up to King's College, Cambridge with a scholarship and won the Pitt Scholarship, graduating with a first class degree in Classics in 1886. He was considered to be an "accomplished scholar", was "highly distinguished for the Chancellor's medal" in 1887 and considered "an extraordinarily good modern linguist". He published The Political Evolution the Hungarian Nation in 1908, a text which became "a standard work on the subject".
A right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper, he made a total of 12 first-class cricket appearances between 1884 and 1886, primarily for the University side. He won a blue in 1886 and also played once for Kent County Cricket Club in 1884.
After graduating, Knatchbull-Hugessen spent a year as a teacher at Eton before training as a barrister, being called to the bar in 1890. He married Helena Regina Frederica Flesch von Brunningen, daughter of the Austrian nobleman Hermann Flesch Edler von Brunningen, on 8 November 1893. He succeeded to the title Baron Brabourne in 1915, following the death of his nephew Wyndham Knatchbull-Hugessen. Knatchbull-Hugessen also inherited the Knatchbull Baronetcy, of Mersham Hatch, after the death of another cousin, Sir Wyndham Knatchbull, 12th Baronet, in 1917.
Knatchbull-Hugessen was a director and later the chairman of the Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa and was primarily a businessman. He died while journeying from Cape Town, where he had business interests, to London aboard the SS Caernarvon Castle in February 1933 aged 69. He was buried at sea, but is commemorated with a tablet in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin at Smeeth in Kent.
