William Lygon, 8th Earl Beauchamp

Who was William Lygon, 8th Earl Beauchamp?

William Lygon, 8th Earl Beauchamp was a politician in the United Kingdom.

He was the eldest son of the controversial William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, sometime leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. Standing as a Liberal, he was elected as Member of Parliament for East Norfolk at the 1929 general election. At the 1931 general election, when the Liberal Party split over participation in Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, he stood and was elected in the interest of the breakaway Liberal National grouping, which aligned itself with the National Government even after the official Liberals crossed the floor into opposition in 1932, and eventually merged with the Conservative Party. Lygon, known while an MP by his courtesy title, Viscount Elmley, retained his seat as a Liberal National in the 1935 general election. He succeeded to the peerage as the 8th Earl Beauchamp on his father's death in 1938. On his own death without male issue in 1979, his peerages became extinct.