Alexander Hugh Baring
(1835-1899)
19 April 1861

Volume 3, page 123, sitting 3182. 

A scion of the Baring family of bankers, Alexander Hugh Baring was born on 4 May 1835, the son of Francis Baring, 3rd Baron Ashburton and his wife Hortense Eugenie Claire Maret de Bassano. Educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, he graduated in 1857. 

At a by-election in December 1857 he was elected unopposed as the Member of Parliament for Thetford, filling the vacancy created by his father's succession to the peerage. He was re-elected in 1859 and again 1865, and held the seat until he succeeded to the peerage as 4th Baron Ashburton in 1868 on the death of his father. 

On 5 January 1864 he married the Honourable Leonora Caroline Digby, daughter of Edward Digby.

Lord Ashburton died on 18 July 1889 at Bath House, Piccadilly. The following obituary appeared in the Morning Post (29 July 1889): 'We regret to announce the death of Lord Ashburton, which took place somewhat unexpectedly early yesterday morning, at Bath House, Piccadilly. His health had been unsatisfactory for some months past, but his condition was not such as to cause anxiety to his friends until Wednesday afternoon when the symptoms became serious. His eldest son, the Hon. Francis Baring, was to have married the Hon. Mabel Hood yesterday afternoon, but owing to this sudden bereavement the wedding was indefinitely postponed. The late Alexander Hugh Baring, Baron Ashburton, of Ashburton, Devon, in the peerage of the United Kingdom, was the eldest son of Francis, third lord, by his marriage with Hortense, daughter of Hughes Barnard Maret, late Duc de Bassano, and was born in May, 1835. He was educated at Harrow and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1857. In December that year he was elected M.P. of Thetford, which he represented till the death of his father, in 1868, having married, in 1864, the Hon. Leonora Caroline Digby, fourth daughter of Lord Digby, by whom he leaves issue five sons and two daughters. The Hon. Francis Denzil Edward Baring, now Lord Ashburton, was born in July, 1866.' 

He left an estate valued at £200,017.