How a Victorian industrialist helped Kate Middleton's parents
Kate Middleton's journey from ordinary middle class girl to future princess has all the elements of a romantic fairytale.
Kate's great great grandfather, Francis Martineau Lupton built a huge fortune which he left to his family when he died in 1921 Photo: PA
But Ms Middleton's rise to the ranks of the aristocracy would not have been possible without the hard-headed foresight of a Victorian industrialist and philanthropist.
Ms Middleton's great great grandfather holds the key to how the daughter of an airline pilot and a flight attendant managed to attend one of the most expensive independent schools in the country, with fees of £29,000 a year.
An old fashioned, careful, entrepreneur he determined that his children, and his children's children, should have the best education money can buy and set up a family trust worth millions of pounds to pay for it.
Kate's parents now live in a £1 million house in Berkshire are said to have made a small fortune in recent years from the family's mail order business selling children's party supplies.
But it is these family trusts, set up around 100 years ago, which are thought to have enabled the future Princess to attend Marlborough College which led on to St Andrews University where she met Prince William.
At their inception the trusts controlled a Victorian property empire in and around Leeds and benefited from income from a large numbers of rented houses, textile and engineering factories and a fashionable new "arcade" style shopping centre - one of the first outside London.
From the outset the trustees looking after its administration were instructed to pay its beneficiaries the profits and also to fund their children's education.
The current value of these trusts is unknown, although new details are expected to be revealed when the estate of Kate's late grandfather, Peter Middleton, is probated.
However, what is known, is that when the trusts were established the intention was to invest the money from the property empire wisely to ensure it long outlasted the man who created it.
The trust was set up by Kate Middleton's great great grandfather, Francis Martineau Lupton, a wealthy Yorkshire mill owner, who built a huge fortune which he left to his family when he died in 1921.
Francis Lupton had been a city councillor and an alderman in Leeds at the beginning of the 20th Century, and was the first chairman of the city's unhealthy areas committee which was responsible for clearing away the city's slums.
He was a member of the breakaway Liberal Unionists, who were opposed to Home Rule for Ireland proposed by the Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone, and joined the ranks of the Conservative Party in 1895.
With his three brothers, who between them also helped found Leeds University and expand the city's General Infirmary hospital, he ran the family's successful textile manufacturing business William Lupton & Company, which had been built up by their father.
Francis Lupton lived in a grand Victorian mansion, which still stands on Elmete Lane, in the Roundhay area of the city.
A history of Leeds records that the Lupton family had for generations been associated with "the commercial, municipal, educational and religious life" of the city.
And his 1921 will, obtained by the Sunday Telegraph, shows his personal estate was worth £70,538 - equivalent to about £1.5 million today.
However, crucially, apparently to avoid death duties, it also shows that the vast bulk of his fortune - including his share in the family business - had already been transferred to a family trust which is still apparently paying an undisclosed income to his descendents today.
Mr Lupton ordered his trustees to invest this large fortune wisely and to "accumulate the residue of the said income in the way of compound interest by investing the same and the resulting income thereof to the intent that such accumulations shall be added to the principal".
The will does not list all the property he had put into trust but reveals it will benefit from the income from "real or leasehold properties" which his trustees should "generally manage...according to their absolute discretion".
And it also controlled an unspecified investment portfolio which the trustees are asked to maintain by investing further "in any of the modes of investment authorised by law for trust money or on a mortgage...in real or personal property".
The trust, the will discloses, also controlled his quarter share in family business, William Lupton and Company, and a stake in another firm, the New Briggate Arcade Company.
The company had been formed in the late 19th Century to build a new shopping centre in Leeds city centre - The Grand Arcade.
Still standing today, but now overshadowed by the city's modern shopping malls and department stores, when it opened in 1898, The Grand Arcade was at the heart of the city's most fashionable commercial district.
Taking its name from the nearby Grand Theatre, it was designed by local architects Smith and Tweddle, and featured two two-storey parallel rows of shops, joined by a shorter row under a glass roof.
In 1920, one avenue of shops was closed and trasnformed into a cinema. A covenant, registered at the time by Mr Lupton's firm, and still on the property register, "henceforth" prohibited the "carry on" of "any noisy noxious or offensive trade" in the property.
Centrepiece of the design of the Grand Arcade is a clock which features a dial mounted between two knights in armour who strike the quarter hour.
On the hour a door opens and five figures mounted on a revolving stage emerge. There is a British Grenadier Guardsman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Canadian, and an Indian. As the stage rotates they disappear into a door on the right hand side of the clock, and a cockerel, above the dial, nods its head, flaps its wings and crows.
The New Briggate Arcade Company finally sold its stake in the arcade in 1938 to the owners of the cinema.
This fortune was inherited by Mr Luton's two daughters, one of whom, Olive, is Kate Middleton's great grandmother, although control of the estate was passed to several more distant male relatives.
Francis Lupton had had three sons, who he had groomed to take over the family business. At least two of boys attended Rugby School and Trinty College Cambridge. But both died in the carnage of the First World War.
The roll of honour at Rugby School records how Captain Maurice Lupton, of the West Yorkshire Regiment, was "Killed in Action by a sniper bullet in the trenches at Lille on 19 June 1915".
It also shows how Major Francis Ashford Lupton, also of the West Yorkshire Regiment, who was already a partner in the family firm, was "killed in action at Miraumont on the night of 19 February 1917 when he went out with one man on reconnaissance and did not return". His body was later found and buried in the nearby military cemetery.
His third son, Lionel, died in the battle of the Somme in July 1916.
Francis Lupton's will left "the sum of one hundred pounds as a mark of my affection" to Maj. Lupton's wife and daughter, but noted that they were "otherwise well provided for".
When Olive Middleton died in 1936 her will shows that the family fortune was still intact. It shows she left a personal estate of £52,031 - worth around £2 million today according to the National Archives' "old money currency converter" which takes account of historical inflation.
But it also discloses that by 1936 there were three separate family trusts in operation controlling the bulk of her and her family's fortune.
The will repeats many of the orders left by her father asking her trustees to invest the money wisely and again makes provision to pay for her ancestors' children's education.
In addition it also set up an additional annuity of £200 a year - worth around £7,400 today for her husband, Richard Noel Middleton, and three children, who included Peter Middleton, Kate Middleton's grandfather.
Again the will does not discuss her specific investments, but suggests they included "railway and other company shares" held in the trust.
However, it does disclose that her father's 1921 trust fund had been used to buy two large houses "Fieldhead and "Linden" in the Roundhay area of Leeds, one of the city's more affluent suburbs.
The will leaves "Fieldhead", her marital home, for "the use of my husband" who also received a bequest for "all the motor cars and motor accessories and all the garden stock and effects."
Now with his death, Peter Middleton's share of what is left of the family fortune will pass to his son Michael, Kate's father. Michael Middleton had previously also shared in a £363,232 legacy from his mother Valerie, who left him £100,000 in cash when she died in 2006.
What became of the family business is unclear. Richard Middleton, who died in 1951, had help to run it, but modern day Companies House shows no record of its existence.
The grand houses in Leeds are long since sold and The Grand Arcade's glory days are a faded memory. However, whatever remains in the trust's coffers today, its lasting legacy would seem to be Princess Catherine, future Queen.
But it is these family trusts, set up around 100 years ago, which are thought to have enabled the future Princess to attend Marlborough College which led on to St Andrews University where she met Prince William.
At their inception the trusts controlled a Victorian property empire in and around Leeds and benefited from income from a large numbers of rented houses, textile and engineering factories and a fashionable new "arcade" style shopping centre - one of the first outside London.
From the outset the trustees looking after its administration were instructed to pay its beneficiaries the profits and also to fund their children's education.
The current value of these trusts is unknown, although new details are expected to be revealed when the estate of Kate's late grandfather, Peter Middleton, is probated.
However, what is known, is that when the trusts were established the intention was to invest the money from the property empire wisely to ensure it long outlasted the man who created it.
The trust was set up by Kate Middleton's great great grandfather, Francis Martineau Lupton, a wealthy Yorkshire mill owner, who built a huge fortune which he left to his family when he died in 1921.
Francis Lupton had been a city councillor and an alderman in Leeds at the beginning of the 20th Century, and was the first chairman of the city's unhealthy areas committee which was responsible for clearing away the city's slums.
He was a member of the breakaway Liberal Unionists, who were opposed to Home Rule for Ireland proposed by the Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone, and joined the ranks of the Conservative Party in 1895.
With his three brothers, who between them also helped found Leeds University and expand the city's General Infirmary hospital, he ran the family's successful textile manufacturing business William Lupton & Company, which had been built up by their father.
Francis Lupton lived in a grand Victorian mansion, which still stands on Elmete Lane, in the Roundhay area of the city.
A history of Leeds records that the Lupton family had for generations been associated with "the commercial, municipal, educational and religious life" of the city.
And his 1921 will, obtained by the Sunday Telegraph, shows his personal estate was worth £70,538 - equivalent to about £1.5 million today.
However, crucially, apparently to avoid death duties, it also shows that the vast bulk of his fortune - including his share in the family business - had already been transferred to a family trust which is still apparently paying an undisclosed income to his descendents today.
Mr Lupton ordered his trustees to invest this large fortune wisely and to "accumulate the residue of the said income in the way of compound interest by investing the same and the resulting income thereof to the intent that such accumulations shall be added to the principal".
The will does not list all the property he had put into trust but reveals it will benefit from the income from "real or leasehold properties" which his trustees should "generally manage...according to their absolute discretion".
And it also controlled an unspecified investment portfolio which the trustees are asked to maintain by investing further "in any of the modes of investment authorised by law for trust money or on a mortgage...in real or personal property".
The trust, the will discloses, also controlled his quarter share in family business, William Lupton and Company, and a stake in another firm, the New Briggate Arcade Company.
The company had been formed in the late 19th Century to build a new shopping centre in Leeds city centre - The Grand Arcade.
Still standing today, but now overshadowed by the city's modern shopping malls and department stores, when it opened in 1898, The Grand Arcade was at the heart of the city's most fashionable commercial district.
Taking its name from the nearby Grand Theatre, it was designed by local architects Smith and Tweddle, and featured two two-storey parallel rows of shops, joined by a shorter row under a glass roof.
In 1920, one avenue of shops was closed and trasnformed into a cinema. A covenant, registered at the time by Mr Lupton's firm, and still on the property register, "henceforth" prohibited the "carry on" of "any noisy noxious or offensive trade" in the property.
Centrepiece of the design of the Grand Arcade is a clock which features a dial mounted between two knights in armour who strike the quarter hour.
On the hour a door opens and five figures mounted on a revolving stage emerge. There is a British Grenadier Guardsman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Canadian, and an Indian. As the stage rotates they disappear into a door on the right hand side of the clock, and a cockerel, above the dial, nods its head, flaps its wings and crows.
The New Briggate Arcade Company finally sold its stake in the arcade in 1938 to the owners of the cinema.
This fortune was inherited by Mr Luton's two daughters, one of whom, Olive, is Kate Middleton's great grandmother, although control of the estate was passed to several more distant male relatives.
Francis Lupton had had three sons, who he had groomed to take over the family business. At least two of boys attended Rugby School and Trinty College Cambridge. But both died in the carnage of the First World War.
The roll of honour at Rugby School records how Captain Maurice Lupton, of the West Yorkshire Regiment, was "Killed in Action by a sniper bullet in the trenches at Lille on 19 June 1915".
It also shows how Major Francis Ashford Lupton, also of the West Yorkshire Regiment, who was already a partner in the family firm, was "killed in action at Miraumont on the night of 19 February 1917 when he went out with one man on reconnaissance and did not return". His body was later found and buried in the nearby military cemetery.
His third son, Lionel, died in the battle of the Somme in July 1916.
Francis Lupton's will left "the sum of one hundred pounds as a mark of my affection" to Maj. Lupton's wife and daughter, but noted that they were "otherwise well provided for".
When Olive Middleton died in 1936 her will shows that the family fortune was still intact. It shows she left a personal estate of £52,031 - worth around £2 million today according to the National Archives' "old money currency converter" which takes account of historical inflation.
But it also discloses that by 1936 there were three separate family trusts in operation controlling the bulk of her and her family's fortune.
The will repeats many of the orders left by her father asking her trustees to invest the money wisely and again makes provision to pay for her ancestors' children's education.
In addition it also set up an additional annuity of £200 a year - worth around £7,400 today for her husband, Richard Noel Middleton, and three children, who included Peter Middleton, Kate Middleton's grandfather.
Again the will does not discuss her specific investments, but suggests they included "railway and other company shares" held in the trust.
However, it does disclose that her father's 1921 trust fund had been used to buy two large houses "Fieldhead and "Linden" in the Roundhay area of Leeds, one of the city's more affluent suburbs.
The will leaves "Fieldhead", her marital home, for "the use of my husband" who also received a bequest for "all the motor cars and motor accessories and all the garden stock and effects."
Now with his death, Peter Middleton's share of what is left of the family fortune will pass to his son Michael, Kate's father. Michael Middleton had previously also shared in a £363,232 legacy from his mother Valerie, who left him £100,000 in cash when she died in 2006.
What became of the family business is unclear. Richard Middleton, who died in 1951, had help to run it, but modern day Companies House shows no record of its existence.
The grand houses in Leeds are long since sold and The Grand Arcade's glory days are a faded memory. However, whatever remains in the trust's coffers today, its lasting legacy would seem to be Princess Catherine, future Queen.
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