A life peer since 1967, in 1999 he became the first member of either of the British Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom to represent the Green Party.

[4] He married Mary Rose Wauchope (a cousin of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon) in 1955, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.

[5] After graduating from Oxford, he trained for holy orders at Westcott House, Cambridge, an liberal Anglo-Catholic theological college.

He served as assistant chaplain at St John's Cathedral in Hong Kong from 1955 to 1957 and then was vicar of Christ Church, Kowloon Tong, until 1959.

Having received a substantial inheritance in that year, he returned to England to live in Mayfair and then Hampstead.

He was made a Liberal Life peer as Baron Beaumont of Whitley, of Child's Hill in Greater London, in 1967.

Baron Beaumont of Whitley died at St Thomas' Hospital in London after being hospitalised for several weeks.