Film footage was broadcast on TV and filled the newspapers, hailed as 'The Wedding of the Year' which saw the attendance of our late Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, The Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and several other members of the royal family, including the US Ambassador. At just 18 years old, Frances remains one of the youngest woman wed in Westminster Abbey. The Earl was 12 years her senior.
Born Frances Ruth Roche at Park House, on the royal estate at Sandringham, Norfolk, on 20 January 1936. Her father was Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy, a friend of King George VI and the elder son of the American heiress Frances Ellen Work and her first husband, the 3rd Baron Fermoy. Her mother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, a daughter of William Smith Gill, was a confidante and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). Frances held from birth the style of The Honourable as the daughter of a baron.
The marriage was unhappy and ended in an acrimonious divorce with Francis marrying her lover Peter Shand Kydd and loosing custody of her four children. Peter was heir to the wallpaper fortune built by his father Norman Shand Kydd. Diana later admitted she had been haunted by the crunch of the gravel as her mother departed."
On 14 July 1976, the 8th Earl Spencer (1924-1992) married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth (1929-2016) their affair resulted in a divorce from her first marriage which had produced four children. A socialite and politician, Raine was the daughter of the romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland.
As Countess Spencer, Raine was unpopular with her stepdaughter Lady Diana Spencer and her siblings, who referred to their stepmother as
"Acid Raine". However, media reports have suggested that at the time of her death Diana had reconciled with her stepmother, while her relationship with her mother Frances Shand Kydd, had been strained; Diana and her mother had not communicated for several months before Diana died.
Frances and Peter, both on their second marriages, divorced in June 1988. Frances blamed the pressure of media attention, following the rise to fame of Diana, for the breakdown of the marriage.
Frances Ruth Shand Kydd died in 2004 at age 68 years old, seven years after Diana, she converted to Catholicsm and devoted the final years of her life to charity work. Peter Shand Kydd married for a third time and died in 2006.
Her funeral at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Oban on 10 June was attended by her children and grandchildren, including Princes William (who gave a reading) and Harry. The then Prince Charles, her former son-in-law, did not attend because he was travelling to Washington to lead the British delegation at the state funeral of the former US President Ronald Reagan the following day.