Meet the Rees-Sproggs
Baby Sixtus joins Wulfric, Anselm, Dunstan, Alphege.. and Mary Anne
TORY MP Jacob Rees-Mogg marks the arrival of his latest child with a family photo.
But this is no ordinary family – and the clue is in the tot’s name.
Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher, born last week, joins four brothers with equally posh – and obscure – names.
There’s one-year-old Alfred Wulfric Leyson Pius, five-year-old Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam, seven-year-old Thomas Wentworth Somerset Dunstan, and Peter Theodore Alphege, nine.
The upper-crust Tory MP and his even posher wife have borrowed from religious history and her family’s aristo- cratic ancestors. Only their eight-year-old daughter – Mary Anne Charlotte Emma – has more ordinary names, after Mr Rees-Mogg’s sisters.
The Eton-educated MP is known for his impeccable manners and traditional dress style. He is rarely seen without a tie and a suit, something his son Peter appears to be following in the photo.
Mr Rees-Mogg does acknowledge that having lots of kids is hard work – “for the family nanny”.
His aristocratic-born wife Helena, 39, once joked her husband wanted 12 children, enough for a cricket team and a scorer. But Mr Rees-Mogg, 48, has revealed he’s calling it a day because Helena feels she has “done her duty”.
He told the Mirror: “I love having lots of children, we have as many as possible, but as Helena does all the hard work I think six will be it.”
Helena, daughter of the late Somerset de Chair MP, is a descendant of Charles Watson-Wentworth, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, a Prime Minister briefly in the 1700s and whose horse is immortalised in a National Gallery painting.
The Marquess’ nephew William Fitzwilliam inherited his estate including the stately home Wentworth Woodhouse, given £7.6million in repair funds by the Tory government last year.
Sixtus’ name refers to third-century Pope Sixtus II, not the number six, but the MP said: “I like the ambiguity.” dan.bloom@mirror.co.uk