For those with an eye for English religious history there could scarcely have been a more symbolic gesture than Tom Stonor’s appointment as Lord Chamberlain by Queen Elizabeth II. Born into one of the oldest recusant families in England, one of Stonor’s names was Campion: in honour of St Edmund Campion, who in the dark days of persecution was sheltered at Stonor Park by his ancestors and later martyred at Tyburn under Elizabeth I.
When Stonor was invited to become a Lord-in-Waiting in 1992 it was final confirmation, should any have been required, that in the second Elizabethan age there was no bar to Catholics entering royal service at the highest levels. He retired as Lord Chamberlain in 2000 because of ill-health; independently he had also served the Church as a Consultor of the Patrimony of the Holy See. For his work in both roles he respectively received the Grand Crosses of the Royal Victorian Order and the Order of St Gregory the Great.
