Nicholas Cavendish, 6th Baron Chesham
British politician

Nicholas Charles Cavendish, 6th Baron Chesham (7 November 1941 – 27 August 2009), was a British Conservative politician.
A member of the Cavendish family headed by the Duke of Devonshire, Chesham was the son of John Cavendish, 5th Baron Chesham and Mary Edmunds Marshall. He took his seat in the House of Lords on his father's death in 1989, and served as Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard (Deputy Chief Government Whip in the House of Lords) from 1995 to 1997 in the Conservative administration of John Major. However, he lost his seat in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, which removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the upper chamber of Parliament. He married first on 4 November 1965 to Susan Donne Beauchamp. They divorced in 1969. Nicholas then married Suzanne Adrienne Byrne, in 1973. He died on 27 August 2009.
They had two sons:
Charles Cavendish, 7th Baron Chesham, b. 11 November 1974 who succeeded his father to become the seventh Baron Chesham.
“Nicholas Cavendish, 6th Baron Chesham” enters the record as british politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nicholas, Cavendish and Baron can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7025188. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 2009, 1989 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nicholas Cavendish, 6th Baron Chesham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.