page_title: George Capell, 7th Earl of Essex
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: George Capell, 7th Earl of Essex / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: The Countess of Essex John Singer Sargent -- American painter 1906 Private collection Oil on canvas 49.5 x 38.2 in. Jpg: The Athenaeum
context_page_description: George Devereux de Vere Capell, 7th Earl of Essex, was a British aristocrat. He succeeded to the title Earl of Essex in 1892.
context_section_description: Lord Essex married twice. His first wife, Ellenor Harriet Maria Hartford, whom he married in 1882, died only three years later in 1885.  Ellenor was the eldest daughter of William Henry Harford of Oldtown House in Almondsbury. Their only child, Algernon, was born in 1884.
  In 1893, Lord Essex married again, this time to the American heiress and socialite Adele Grant, daughter of the New York railway magnate David Beach Grant of the Grant Locomotive Works. The wedding at St Margaret's, Westminster, on 14 December 1893, was noted in The New York Times as a grand social event, presided over by Archdeacon Farrar, and accompanied by Sir Arthur Sullivan on the organ. Together, the couple had two daughters:
  Lady Iris Mary Athenais de Vere Capell (1895–1977)
  Lady Joan Rachel de Vere Capell (1899–1979), who married The 1st Viscount Ingleby.
  Lord Essex was run over by a taxi in September 1916. He died aged 58 on 25 September at Stanley House in Newmarket, Suffolk. His titles passed to his son from his first marriage, Algernon Capell.
  The death of The 7th Earl of Essex set in motion events that were to bring about the demise of Cassiobury House and change the town of Watford. Death duties, a form of taxation introduced in 1894 by the Liberal Government, had placed an increasing financial burden on aristocracy and landed gentry, and was responsible for the breaking up of many large estates across Britain. Lord Essex's widow, Adele, was presented with a substantial tax bill. After six years, she decided to sell Cassiobury House, and a large sale of the contents was held over a period of ten days in June 1922 "by direction of the Right Honourable Adèle, Countess Dowager of Essex". The fine art collection was split up and sold to private collectors and museums around the world, and a number of significant works of art and interior fittings are now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, United States. Adele did not, however, find a buyer for Cassiobury House; in July 1922 she died of a heart attack in her bath, and the house remained unoccupied for a further five years. Finally, it was sold for its materials and demolished in 1927. The former site of the house was acquired by property developers for suburban housing — now the residential area of Cassiobury — and the remainder of the estate was acquired by Watford Borough Council and is now in use as Cassiobury Park.
caption: Portrait of his second wife, by John Singer Sargent, 1906.
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