His godparents were his great-grandfather the 7th Duke of Grafton, a retired general who was severely wounded in the Crimean War; his grandfather Major James Brougham; his first cousin Lt. Edward FitzRoy (1893–1917), who was killed aboard HMS Simoom (1916); and his aunt Lady Mary FitzRoy.

[4] Shortly after John's birth, his father, Viscount Ipswich, enlisted in the military as a gentleman ranker in the 5th Buffs.

Sir John Nelson; and Lady Mary Rose FitzRoy (1918–2010), who married Francis Trelawny Williams.

)[8] In 1929, when styled as Viscount Ipswich, gave away his mother on the occasion of her second marriage, to Major Gavin Hume-Gore.

[11] He was reported to have "struck the ridge of a cement-surfaced road early in the first lap, and this caused him to lose control of his machine.

Stewards at once made gallant efforts to extricate the Duke from the blazing car, but did not succeed before he was seriously burned.