| Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Earl of Southesk | |
| Honorific Suffix: | JP DL |
| Birth Name: | Charles Noel Carnegie |
| Birth Date: | 20 March 1854 |
| Death Place: | Kinnaird Castle, Angus, Scotland |
| Education: | Harrow School |
| Alma Mater: | University of St Andrews |
| Parents: | James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk Lady Catherine Hamilton Noel |
| Children: | 5, including Charles |
| Relatives: | Lancelot Carnegie (half-brother) David Carnegie (half-brother) James Carnegie, 3rd Duke of Fife (grandson) |
Charles Noel Carnegie, 10th Earl of Southesk JP DL (20 March 1854 – 10 November 1941), was a Scottish nobleman.
Carnegie was the son of the explorer and poet James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk and his first wife Catherine Hamilton Noel, daughter of the Charles Noel, 1st Earl of Gainsborough.[1] He had three older sisters, Lady Arabella Charlotte (wife of Samuel Romilly), Lady Constance Mary (wife of Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin) and Lady Beatrice Diana Cecilia Diana Cecillia (wife of the Rev. Henry Holmes Stewart). After his mother's death in 1855 at the age of twenty-six, his father remarried to Lady Susan Catherine Mary Murray (eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Dunmore) in 1860.[1] From his father's second marriage, he had seven younger half-siblings, including: Sir Lancelot Douglas Carnegie, Lady Dora Susan (wife of Maj. Ernest de Rodakowski-Rivers), Lady Elizabeth Erica, Lady Helena Mariota, Lady Katherine Agnes Blanche (wife of Courtenay Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar), Hon. Robert Francis (who married Violet Fraser), and Hon. David Wynford Carnegie.[1]
His paternal grandparents were Sir James Carnegie, 5th Baronet (de jure 8th Earl of Southesk) and the former Charlotte Lysons (a daughter of the Reverend Daniel Lysons).
He was educated at Harrow and St Andrews University, and would later receive an honorary degree from the university in October 1902.[2]
Amongst his various honours, he was an honorary colonel in the Forfar and Kincardine Artillery. He also served as a Deputy Lieutenant for Angus, Aberdeenshire, and Kincardineshire from 5 January 1900. He held the office of Justice of the Peace for Aberdeenshire and for Angus.[3] In 1905,[4] he succeeded his father as the 10th Earl of Southesk who had restored the family titles, with the original precedence, by reversal of the 1715 Act of Attainder in 1855.[1]
He had the reputation of being the best game shot in Scotland.
In 1921, Kinnaird Castle, which was situated in one of the grandest Scottish glens and was the seat of the Earls of Southesk for more than 600 years, burnt to the ground. "Only a small part of the servant's wing has escaped. A considerable part of the library was saved, but many books impossible to replace, as well as Raeburn's portrait of Lady Carnegie, valued at £10,000, were lost."[5] Lord Southesk rebuilt the castle. A prominent art collector,[6] he owned "a large collection of paintings by old masters and antique gems."
On 1 August 1891, he was married to Ethel Mary Elizabeth Bannerman, the only child of Sir Alexander Bannerman, 9th Baronet and Lady Arabella Diana Sackville-West (the youngest daughter of Lord Chamberlain George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr and Elizabeth Sackville-West, Countess De La Warr).[7] [8] Together, they had five children, three sons and two daughters:[9]
Lord Southesk died on 10 November 1941 at Kinnaird Castle near Brechin, County Angus.[15] Lady Southesk died on 10 December 1947.[1]
Through his eldest son, he was a grandfather of James George Alexander Bannerman Carnegie, who succeeded his maternal aunt, Princess Arthur of Connaught, suo jure Duchess of Fife, as the 3rd Duke of Fife in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1959 because her only child, Alastair, 2nd Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, had predeceased her.[11] In 1992, the Duke became the 12th Earl of Southesk in the Peerage of Scotland.[1]
He and his wife are briefly mentioned in the successful British television series Downton Abbey, in which they are mentioned as paying their respects to the fictitious Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern), following their attendance of a family funeral.
Founded on Wood's edition of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland containing an historical and genealogical account of the Nobility of that Kingdom edited by Sir James Balfour Paul, Lord Lyon King of Arms, vol VIII, (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1911) digitized by Google Books, p. 92