Extant barony in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Baron Redesdale
Arms of Baron Redesdale: Argent, a fess between three moles sable (Mitford); 2nd and 3rd, Azure three Lozenges conjoined in fess Or a Canton Ermine (Freeman)
The Mitford family is an aristocratic English family, with origins in medieval Northumberland where they held Mitford Castle. Sir John Mitford was Speaker of the House of Commons between 1801 and 1802 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland between 1802 and 1806. His only son, the second Baron, served as Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords from 1851 to 1886. In 1877, he was created Earl of Redesdale, in the County of Northumberland, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.[2] Lord Redesdale never married, and on his death in 1886 both titles became extinct. The Earl bequeathed his substantial estates to his first cousin twice removed, the diplomat, politician and writer Sir Bertram Mitford, the great-grandson of historian William Mitford, who was the elder brother of the first Baron Redesdale.
Lord Redesdale was therefore succeeded by his younger brother, the third Baron. He was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1935. He died childless in 1962 when the title passed to his younger brother, the fourth Baron. He died in the following year, also childless, and was succeeded by his nephew, the fifth Baron. He was the son of the Hon. Ernest Rupert Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, fifth son of the first Baron.