The Earl of Cardigan has made up with his son who sold the family’s 16th century mansion.
David Brudenell-Bruce, 67, said he forgave Viscount Savernake after the 38-year-old sold Tottenham House in Wiltshire in 2008.
Lord Cardigan had been removed from running the stunning Savernake Forest Estate after he moved to the US and got divorced.
When he came back to the UK with his current wife Joanne, Viscount Savernake, 38, had supported the estate’s trustees’ plan to sell the mansion for £11.5million.
Old Master paintings of his family were also sold, reportedly to clear a £2million overdraft.
But the earl has now ‘just about’ forgiven his son for the move, which left him on £10 a day in benefits.
The Earl of Cardigan (pictured with his wife Joanne at Savernake Ledge) has made up with his son after the heir sold the family’s 16th century mansion
David Brudenell-Bruce, 67, said he forgave Viscount Savernake (pictured when he was a baby with mother the Countess Rosamond) after Tottenham House near Marlborough, Wiltshire, and family paintings were sold in 2008
When he came back to the UK with his current wife Joanne, Viscount Savernake, 38, had supported the estate’s trustees’ plan to sell the mansion (pictured) for £11.5million
He told the Times: ‘You have the choice of frittering money on one side or keeping something for posterity on the other, and he was not very alive to the posterity.
‘It is time Thomas took an interest and came to help. Passion is coming a little later to him than it did to me. I hoped it would come eventually, and now it has.’
The pair have agreed to run the 4,500-acre estate together and the earl confirmed he would never sell it.
Lord Cardigan added he hopes his unmarried son will produce an heir as his 40th birthday looms.
The grounds, which have been in the family for 31 generations since 1067, is believed to be worth around £20million.
Despite resolving the family spat, the earl is being sued by barrister Henry Hendron, who helped him stop sale of family portraits in 2011.
But the lawyer claims the earl failed to pay him for his work and he has filed papers to Swindon County Court suing the aristocrat for £27,720.
Mr Hendron’s order saved the paintings in 2011, but a judge refused to renew the injunction a week later, branding the legal battle ‘a sad state of affairs for a very distinguished family’.
A month after later, the courts made an order temporarily preventing the Earl from selling estate property.
The trustees, some of whom have since been removed, complained he had tried to sell estate silverware under a number of pseudonyms.
It was during this High Court hearing Mr Hendron described his client as down and out, saying he had no money and needed to raise money or go hungry.
The comments were later dismissed by the Earl, who told reporters: ‘I am not down and out.’
Mr Hendron (left at the Old Bailey in London) says he was contacted in the first week of July 2011 by debt adviser David Bloom, who was working for Lord Cardigan (right at Swindon Crown Court), before securing an injunction to stop the aristocrat’s paintings being sold
A final High Court hearing ruled against the Earl in April 2012 as Mr Justice Newry said the paintings were held by the trustees and not the peer.
Mr Hendron now says he was contacted in the first week of July 2011 by debt adviser David Bloom, who was working for the peer, setting out his client’s dispute with trustees over the paintings up for auction.
At a meeting at Lord Cardigan’s lodge a couple of days later, Mr Hendron claims the peer told him he had no money ‘to eat, let alone pay legal bills’.
They agreed legal costs would be payable at the conclusion of the court case.
The case ended in April 2012 when the earl lost his High Court battle – but Mr Hendron says he has still not been paid.
Sitting last month, District Judge Peter Hatvany set the matter down for a one day hearing on a date to be fixed.
The hearing is expected to take place over the summer. The Earl was not represented.
Who is the Earl of Cardigan and what are his family connections?
David Michael James Brudenell-Bruce is the heir apparent to the Marquessate of Ailesbury
His father was Michael Brudenell-Bruce, eighth Marquess of Ailesbury, and his mother was Edwina Sylvia de Winton Wills of W.D. & H.O. Wills.
Brudenell-Bruce was educated at Hawtreys prep-school, Eton College, Rannoch School, and the Royal Agricultural College.
Since 1987, he has been the 31st Hereditary Warden of England’s only privately owned forest – Savernake Forest, which has never been sold in its almost 1,000-year history.
A final High Court hearing ruled against the Earl (pictured at Tottenham House at his estate in Wiltshire) in April 2012 as Mr Justice Newry said the paintings were held by the trustees and not the peer
His family is descended from the Seymours, with Henvry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour being the only one to bear Henry a son, King Edward VI.
The Earl of Cardigan was present at the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, at which Wiltshire Police were accused of brutalising travellers near Stonehenge.
They made more than 300 arrests, which was said to be the biggest arrest of UK civilians for 100 years.
Brudenell-Bruce’s testimony was instrumental in a Crown Court judge rejecting police charges against the travellers.
He went on to sue newspapers that had falsely claimed he was offering accommodation for the New Age Travellers.
The Earl of Cardigan’s daughter is Bo Bruce (pictured), who appeared on TV talent show The Voice
The Earl of Cardigan’s daughter is Bo Bruce, who appeared on TV talent show The Voice.
Her father threatened to sell stories about the singer, telling her: ‘Should I invent some tasty dirt about you?’
When Miss Bruce was competing on the BBC1 talent show in 2012, the Earl told her he was co-operating with a tabloid and taunted her by asking whether he should tell reporters about ‘the little scorpion that I have as a daughter’.
At the time, Miss Bruce’s mother, the Earl’s first wife, cookery writer Rosamond Winkley, was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer.
She reached ‘the end of her tether’ with the Earl’s threat. The singer was granted a non-molestation order against her father in the wake of the exchange.
Details of the Earl’s ‘abusive’ and ‘threatening’ behaviour towards his daughter were disclosed in a High Court judgment in the latest round of his lengthy legal battle with the trustees of his ancestral estate, Savernake in Wiltshire.