Baron Fermoy is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. The title was created by Queen Victoria by letters patent of 10 September 1856 for Edmond Roche.
Previous letters patent had been issued on 14 May 1855 which purported to create this barony for Roche, but these were ruled invalid in 1856. Under the Acts of Union 1800, three pre-1801 Irish peerages had to go extinct for each new Irish peerage created. The three extinct peerages cited in 1855 were Viscounts Melbourne and Tyrconnel, and the Earl of Mountrath. However, although the earldom went extinct in 1802 with the death of the 7th Earl of Mountrath, the subsidiary title of Baron Castle Coote passed by special remainder and remained extant (until 1827). As a result, the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords reasoned that while the number of peerages had reduced in 1802, the number of peers had not, thus the 1855 patent was incompatible with the terms of the Act of Union. The 1856 patent substituted Viscount O'Neill for Earl of Mountrath and was accepted.[1]
The first Baron represented County Cork and then Marylebone in the British House of Commons, taking the Chiltern Hundreds the day the spurious 1855 patent was issued. He also served as Lord Lieutenant of County Cork. His younger son, the third Baron, sat as an Irish nationalist Member of Parliament for Kerry East. He was succeeded by his son, the fourth Baron, who represented King's Lynn in Parliament as a Conservative. The title is currently held by his grandson, the sixth Baron, who succeeded his father in 1984.
The family seat is Nethercote House, near Nethercote, Warwickshire. The first Baron was named after his relative Edmund Burke, and they are descended from the House of Burke.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was a great-great-granddaughter of the 1st Baron Fermoy through her mother, Frances Shand Kydd. Shand Kydd was the younger daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy, a friend of King George VI and the elder of the twin sons of the American heiress Frances Ellen Work and her first husband, James Boothby Burke Roche, who, after their divorce, became the 3rd Baron Fermoy. Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, was a confidante and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the founder of the annual King's Lynn Festival (of classical music) in Norfolk, England.
The heir presumptive is the present holder's brother, Edmund Hugh Burke Roche (born 1972).
The heir presumptive's heir apparent is his son, Archie Edmund Roche (born 2007).