[2] From his father's second marriage to Elizabeth Grey (a second daughter of Sir George Grey, 1st Baronet), he had an elder half-brother Charles, who married Lady Ida Harriet Augusta (a daughter of William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll and Elizabeth FitzClarence, an illegitimate daughter of King William IV) who succeeded their father as the 2nd Earl of Gainsborough.

[3] From his father's fourth marriage in 1833 to Lady Frances Jocelyn (the second daughter of Robert Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Roden),[4] he had two younger half-siblings: Roden Noel (a Groom of the Privy Chamber) and Lady Victoria Noel (the wife of Sir Fowell Buxton, 3rd Baronet, the Governor of South Australia).

[5] He served under Lord Derby and then Benjamin Disraeli as a Lord of the Treasury from 1866 until 1868, and then briefly under Disraeli as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury between November 1868 and the fall of the Conservative government in December of the same year.

Apart from his political career Noel was also a Captain in the 11th Hussars and a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for Rutland.

[2] On 30 June 1863, Noel was married to Lady Augusta Mary, the second daughter of Lady Lucy Eleanor Sherard (eldest daughter of Philip Sherard, 5th Earl of Harborough) and Col. Henry Cecil Lowther of Barleythorpe Hall (the second son of William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale).