Sir William Darell, 4th Baronet

The Reverend Sir William Lionel Darell, 4th Baronet JP, was an English clergyman who served as rector of Fretherne.

Early life

Darell was born on 5 February 1817. He was the second son of Sir Harry Darell, 2nd Baronet and Amelia Mary Anne Beecher. Among his siblings were Sir Harry Darell, 3rd Baronet, brevet Lieutenant-Colonel in the 7th Dragoon Guards, Emily Mary Darell, Isabella Martha Darell, and Eliza Anne Darell.
The Darell family derived its fortune from his father and grandfather's service in the East India Company in the late eighteenth century. His paternal grandparents were the former Isabella Tullie and Lionel Darell, 1st Baronet, MP for Hedon. His maternal grandfather was William Beecher of Howbury, Bedfordshire.
He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, receiving his B.A. in 1839 and M.A. in 1842.

Career

The Rector at Fretherne in Gloucestershire from 1844, he succeeded as the 4th Baronet Darell, of Ancaster House, Richmond Hill upon the death of his unmarried elder brother, Harry Francis Colville Darell on 6 January 1853.
Sir William served as a Magistrate for Gloucestershire and Cork.

Personal life

On 28 January 1840, Darell was married to Mary Ford, eldest daughter of Sir Francis Ford, 2nd Baronet and Eliza Brady. Mary died, without issue, in 1842.
His second marriage was on 18 April 1843 to Harriet Mary Tierney, daughter of Sir Edward Tierney, 2nd Baronet. Her father gave them Fretherne Court, which Sir Edward had completely transmogrified from a humble refectory into a lavish country seat with many reception rooms, a ballroom, billiard room, water towers and halls, and a chapel just inside the front entrance hall. Before her death in 1873, they were the parents of:

Flora Mary Darell, who married Edward Stopford Claremont, a son of Edward Stopford Claremont, in 1872.
Sir Lionel Edward Darell, 5th Baronet, who married Helen Frances Marshland, only child of Edward Marshland of Henbury Park, Cheshire, in 1870.
Edward Tierney Gilchrist Darell, a Lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Yeomanry who married Amy Schuster, daughter of Leo Schuster, in 1869. They divorced in 1878 and he married Florence Broadwood, widow of Thomas Broadwood of Holmbush and daughter of William Johnson, in 1882.

After his second wife's death in 1873, he married Fanny Julia Clarke on 7 January 1880 at St George's, Hanover Square. The widow of Tanner Owen Clarke, she was a daughter of Alfred Braithwaite and Elizabeth Fuller.
Sir William died in 1883 and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Lionel.

Descendants

Through his younger son Edward, he was a grandfather of Florence Mary Darell, who became the Countess of Kinnoull upon her marriage to Archibald Hay, 13th Earl of Kinnoull.