Profumo Sex Scandal Link to Astor family?

[Linda Minor]

Linda, have you ever come across any notable connections to the British chivalric Order the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem re the Astors/these matters?
The Astor's are a famous family for their close relationship to the Pilgrim Society (http://www.isgp.eu/organisations/Pilgrims_Society02.htm).

I don't usually follow organized societies of that sort in my research because they are so secretive. I tend to follow financial ties that can be documented more clearly, and I tend to believe that at the root of all cabals is the desire for financial control and manipulation, even if they do often get off on perverse sexual and occult manipulations.

I have begun writing about the real story of Colonel House, whose political life began before the death of his father in 1880. House had gone to a couple of backwoods grammar schools in Virginia before transferring to Hopkins Grammar in New Haven, where he hoped to prepare for Yale. He was side-tracked by a blossoming interest in political intrigue when he became friends with a fellow Hopkins "scholar," named Oliver Morton whose father aspired to be U.S. President. As a consequence neither boy made it to Yale, but they both got admitted to Cornell in Ithaca, NY, where Yale Bonesman Andrew Dickson White had been installed as president.
http://www.cornell.edu/president/history_bio_white.cfm

The official story is that Col. House--who then was only Eddie or Ed House--got called back to Texas to take care of his father. When his dad died, Eddie did not return to college, but instead soon met his wife in the backwoods of Texas. The story is that he had been needed in Texas to help his brothers organize their vast inheritance; instead, he got married and departed for Europe, where he stayed for at least a year. His first daughter Mona was born in Naples, Italy in 1882.

So I started thinking that this sneaky little guy must have had other motives and may have used his contacts from college or may have developed other contacts while abroad. What I learned was that he left around the same time that President James A. Garfield was assassinated, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Ga...ssination] giving rise to the presidency of Chester Arthur, who wound up replacing every member of Garfield's Cabinet except for Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son.

In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur appointed William Waldorf Astor Minister to Italy, and he lived in Rome until 1885. ("Go and enjoy yourself, my dear boy," the president told Astor.) At this point one can only wonder whether there was a contact made by House while he was in Italy for a year during the same timespan.

Astor and his family moved to England, a decision that was published throughout all the major newspapers. Although the owner of the Waldorf Hotel built where his home had stood, William Astor visited it only once in his lifetime. In 1897, his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV (1864-1912) built the Astoria Hotel adjoining the Waldorf, and the complex then became known as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

In 1891 W.W. Astor left his home in NY and moved to England, where he first rented Lansdowne House in London until 1893 when he purchased a country estate at Cliveden-on-Thames in Taplow, Buckinghamshire from Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster. In 1899 Astor became a British subject and in 1903 acquired Hever Castle near Edenbridge, Kent about 30 miles south of London. The huge estate, built in 1270 was where Anne Boleyn lived as a child. William Waldorf Astor invested a great deal of time and money to restore the castle, building what is known as the "Tudor Village" and creating a lake and lavish gardens. In 1905 he gave his son William Waldorf Astor II and his new daughter-in-law, the former Nancy Langhorne, the Cliveden estate as a wedding present. In 1911 he purchased the London Sunday Observer. Astor's move to England was influenced by his distrust of the American press. Newspapers famously quoted him as stating "America is not a fit place for a gentleman to live." When he died, his ashes were buried under the marble floor of the chapel at Cliveden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wal...ount_Astor

The heir to Cliveden was William Waldorf II, who grew up in New York City but moved to England when he was 12 and attended Eton College and at New College, Oxford. He later married a divorced woman from Virginia in the U.S. The left-wing journalist Claud Cockburn called the couple and their guests the "Cliveden Set" and claimed they had influence over affairs of state. Waldorf Astor was a friend and supporter of David Lloyd George and during the First World War he served as the Prime Minister's Parliamentary Secretary. From 1919 until 1921 he served in government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health.

On the death of his father, Waldorf Astor inherited a fortune that included The Observer. In addition, he succeeded as 2nd Viscount Astor and became a member of the House of Lords, and his seat in the House of Commons was forfeited. His wife Nancy became the party's candidate in the subsequent by-election in 1919. It was this period in which Col. House had lost favor with President Wilson, who discovered House was in cahoots with Jan Smuts and others who favored continuation of the British colonial empire which Wilson wished to destroy.

During the military buildup in Germany in the 1930s, the Astors promoted entente with Germany, seen by some as appeasement of Hitler. Many of their associates felt sympathy for the state of Germany after World War I, feared Communism, and supported the position of the British government. Lord Astor had Anti-Semitic views and in the 1930s he told Thomas Jones that Germany was criticized because, Newspapers are influenced by those firms which advertise so largely in the press and are frequently under Jewish control.[1] However, Lady Astor was critical of the Nazis, mostly on women's rights. Lord Astor's Anti-Semitism was non-violent and he protested to Hitler about treatment of the Jews. In 1940, they urged Neville Chamberlain to resign and supported Churchill as replacement. He also supported war against Germany when it came although both remained uncomfortable with Joseph Stalin as an ally. His son David, who became owner and editor of The Observer in 1948, never forgave Claud Cockburn and his newssheet The Week for attacks on the "Cliveden Set". Although the Astor family donated Cliveden Estate in Buckinghamshire to the National Trust, Lord Astor lived there until his death in 1952 and his wife remained until her death in 1964.

In fact the dowager was the hostess of parties there at the time of the Profumo scandal in which Stephen Ward was introduced to members of the British government. At that time her husband was dead, and his title had passed to their son, William Waldorf Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor, a British businessman and Conservative Party politician--Bill Astor. He was educated at Eton College and at New College, Oxford. In 1932, he had been appointed to the office of Secretary to the Earl of Lytton, League of Nations Committee of Enquiry in what was then known as Manchuria. That was followed by an appointment as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty Samuel Hoare, who was then made Secretary of State for the Home Department in the new cabinet of Neville Chamberlain in 1937.

In 1952 Astor then took over the family's Cliveden estate in Buckinghamshire, where he and his family continued to live until 1966, when he died at age 58 from a heart attack. During the Profumo Affair Astor was accused of having an affair with Mandy Rice-Davies. In response to being told during one of the trials arising out of the scandal that Astor had denied having an affair with her, Rice-Davies famously replied, "Well he would, wouldn't he?"