Robert Capell, 10th Earl of Essex

Robert Edward de Vere Capell, 10th Earl of Essex (13 January 1920 – 5 June 2005) was the 10th Earl of Essex.

Lord Essex was born in 1920, the son of Arthur de Vere Capell and Alice Currie. His father died when he was three. He spent some time in an orphanage, where he was bewildered when the head told him he would be the Earl of Essex someday. This interest was revived when many years later, he received a newspaper clipping from a friend saying that the heir to the Earls of Essex might be an American, Bladen Horace Capell. This led to an exhaustive search by de Vere Capell with much correspondence with many distant and formerly unknown relatives. Eventually, he managed to prove that his great-grandfather Algernon Capell was the elder brother of Bladen's great-great-grandfather Adolphus Capell.

Capell married Doris Margaret Tomlinson, daughter of George Frederick Tomlinson, in 1942. They had one child, Paul, later the 11th Earl of Essex.

When the 9th Earl died in 1981, it took eight years for Robert to be permitted to take his seat in the House of Lords, a seat which he lost due to the House of Lords Act 1999. He died in 2005, and was succeeded as Earl of Essex by his son.

This chart shows the relation between the 9th Earl of Essex and the 10th Earl.