1897 Aug 16. Born Godstone, Surrey
1901 census at Cromwell Hall, Lingfield, Surrey
1911 census at St. Edward’s School , Oxford. Gives him as born Surrey.
1914 He left school at 16 to enlist in the Fifth Dragoon Guards
1915 May 18. Lands in France
1915 Aug 29 Commissioned . The Buff's (East Kent Regiment). The undermentioned non-commissioned officers and men to be temporary Second Lieutenants. Private C. H. B. Budd, from 5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales' s) Dragoon Guard
1915 He was badly injured at the Battle of Loos when he was hit by three machine-gun bullets, one of which lodged in his brain. He was invalided home with a silver plate in his head and a disability pension. For the rest of his life he suffered paralysis of his right hand. He also had intermittent bouts of headaches and occasional memory loss .
1915 Sep 28. He was wounded as a 2nd Lieutenant with the Buffs at Loos. He was in the 2nd Battalion as they assaulted the dump on Fosse 8. His wound was sustained as B & C Companies clambered up the crumbling slopes of the 30ft mound.
1917 Jul 1. E. Kent Reg. The undermentioned temp. 2nd Lts. to be temp. Lts.: — C. H. B. Budd.
1918 Nov 10. Transferred to Labour Corps, he returned to France as an Acting Captain in the Labour Corps and was involved in the repair and maintenance of highways and bridges
1919 Nov 15. Temp. Lt. C. H. B. Budd relinquishes his commission on account of ill-health, and retains the rank of Lt.
1920 Jun His father Harry Bentinck Budd died in Oxford.
1920 Nov 22. Joined the ADRIC with service no. 1079 . Posted to D Coy
Fines of £2 and £5 from Coy Commander
1921 Feb 23 Married Marie Speight at Leicester
1921 May 15 . Shooting of Cadet Charles Budd (Budd was D Coy when the shooting occured) and Constable Henry Thomas Abram; TNA File at Salthill, co Galway. Prosecution of Constables Henry Thomas Abram, William Gorge Garrett, James Edward Granger, Bert Charles Garner, Michael Joseph Dignum; . HJ Davey was also held by the intruders
The fact that Budd shot and wounded one of the attackers led to Constables Henry Thomas Abram, William Gorge Garrett, James Edward Granger, Bert Charles Garner, Michael Joseph Dignum being prosecuted. They produced a very convoluted story to explain Abram's wound, but were found guilty
1921. May 24 Posted to L Coy
1921 Jul 15 to 30 On Leave
1921 Sep 2. Re-engaged with ADRIC
1921 Sep 13 to 27 Sep on Leave
1921 Dec 20 to 1 Jan 1922 on Leave
1922 Jan 22. Discharged at demobilisation of ADRIC
He formed a company producing pressed steel. When this ended in failure he moved to Italy where he exporting flowers to Britain. . In 1925 the British government commissioned Budd to write a report on the fascist regime in Italy.
1926 May 22. Arrives in UK from Genoa
1926 Jun 24 . Leaves UK for Genoa, Italy. Travels alone and 2nd class, profession "none"
1928 Aug 7 . Marriage to Louise Agnes Renee Roosmale Nepveu London, England
1929 Jun 12. Arrives back in UK from Genoa with his wife and child].He moved to Worthing and lived at Greenville House in Grove Road. Budd was elected Vice President of the local branch of the British Legion.
1929 Feb 1. Leaves UK for Genoa, Italy with wife (Louise Agnes age 22) and son (Edward Charles, aged 1.75yrs) his address is Worthing, Sussex.
Budd, His biographer, Michael Payne, claims that he was described by various people as "dislikable, vain, excitable, prone to wild talk, unstable and with a mental outlook bordering on the pathological. All agreed, however, that his military bearing, coupled with his general appearance - he stood at six feet, with dark brown hair and moustache, and piercing blue eyes - belied his psychological problems and endowed him with charismatic force."
1930 Mar 31. He was elected to Worthing Borough Council as a Conservative councilor
And a year later was elected to West Sussex County Council. as an Independent, returned unopposed to the Offington Ward
1932 Has to pay 1000 pounds for slander
1933 His defection to the BUF gave him the distinction of being the first blackshirt councillor in the country. He resigned from these positions shortly before his move to Birmingham; and it has been suggested he did so unnecessarily early just before elections to avoid embarrassing defeat.
1934 Oct 9. Arrested for riot in Worthing. The Magistrates released all of the defendants on bail. Budd was watched closely by the authorities, as can be seen from files listed on the MI5 website. and available at the National Archives. KV 2/2309 runs from 1933, when the local police began to report Budd's connections to the BUF in some detail, to 1940. It also contains references to his unstable mental state on account of the injuries received in the First World War. Of the 4 on trial, one was Mosley and another was James Joyce (Lord HawHaw)
Sir Patrick Hastings KC represented Mosley and three other members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in a criminal case after they were indicted for "causing a riotous assembly" at a BUF meeting. The trial opened at the Sussex Assizes on 18 December 1934 in front of Mr Justice Branson, with Hastings for the defence and John Flowers KC prosecuting. The prosecution claimed that after a BUF meeting, Mosley and the other defendants had marched around Worthing, threatening and assaulting civilians. Hastings argued that the defendants had been deliberately provoked by a crowd of civilians, and several witnesses testified that the crowd had been throwing tomatoes and threatening Mosley. The judge eventually directed the jury to return a verdict of "not guilty".
1936 The man assigned responsibility for creating a fascist electoral machine in Birmingham was Captain Charles Henry Bentinck-Budd, who replaced Mills as Organiser Birmingham area . Bentinck-Budd affirmed it was ‘useless’ to hold public meetings, especially open-air, and preferred to confine the local BUF activism to the establishing of discreet contact with potential supporters in private. Fascist visibility dipped further in July when the expensive Stratford Road headquarters was abandoned in favour of modest premises at 81 Stafford Street, a building described in the local press as a ‘house-shop’. At the beginning of August Bentinck-Budd’s strategy of withdrawing fascist speakers from the streets of Birmingham was overturned when the national BUF implemented an isolationist propaganda campaign mobilised around the escalating Spanish Civil War. There is a lot in Morgan's PhD thesis
1937 The Birmingham BUF announced that Bentinck-Budd would stand as the fascist movement’s official parliamentary candidate to challenge the incumbent member Geoffrey Lloyd, Under-Secretary in the Home Office, for the Ladywood Division at the next general election. As past president of the British Legion, a member of the Legion of Frontiersmen, an ex-member of the Royal Irish Constabulary and a wounded ex-serviceman having lost a leg on the Western Front, he was a solid choice for this Tory constituency, the Conservatives having ousted a longstanding Labour figure in the 1931 election.
1937 Feb 28. At the monthly General Meeting of Birmingham and Districts Bentinck-Budd outlined his plans for future campaigning and rallied his followers. Over 50 members attended with their friends. These plans were thrown into disarray by the crisis that was to hit the BUF in early March 1937. Precipitated by a chronic lack of funds and massive cuts in expenditure, on 11 March 1937 a comprehensive reduction in paid party personnel occupying positions throughout the movement. Captain Bentinck-Budd found himself one of a long list of staff discharged. Also dismissed from the movement was William Joyce, who along with John Beckett immediately formed the National Socialist League.
1938 The Nat Archives files includes the original postcards sent to Budd from Germany by his secretary, Miss Baker. One of these includes her brief first-hand account of her visit to a rally addressed by Hitler
1939 Aug 14. Royal Engineers. Capt. Charles Harry Bentinck BUDD (late,The Buffs) to be Capt. & Adjt. 2n
1939 Divorced from Louise Agnes Renee Roosmale Nepveu
1940 Jun . Budd was interned in June 1940, under Defence Regulation 18B which allowed imprisonment without charge or trial, due to his involvement with the Fascist movement
1941 May 27. Budd was released from internment, after a judge ruled that the original detention had been mishandled by the Home Office following Budd's application for a writ of Habeas Corpus. The case concerned staff at the Home Office, and one account on the file (KV 2/2311) states: "The Bentinck-Budd case has caused a serious commotion in the Home Office. They are shaken to the core about it..."
1941 Jul. Budd was re-interned on a new order, and this new order stood up to legal scrutiny (as detailed in this and in KV 2/2312, covering 1942-1943). Budd was eventually released from internment due to ill-health, and the file shows how the Security Service intervened to prevent him re-enlisting in the Army
1943 Apr 30 Legal action for false imprisonment. Budd he sued two members of the government, Sir John Anderson and Herbert Morrison, for damages. According to one newspaper report: "Complaint that a former county councillor was put into a bug-infested cell at Brixton Prison, kept in solitary confinement, and paraded in public at railway stations under armed guard was made in London today. Captain Charles Harry Bentinck Budd, R.E., a member from 1930 to 1936 of West Sussex County Council and Worthing Borough Council, who served in the last war and was severely wounded, sued Sir John Anderson and Mr Herbert Morrison, past and present Home Secretaries, and Mr Thomas Broadwood Williamson, of the Home Office, in connection with his detention under Defence Regulation 18b, claiming damages for false imprisonment." Budd lost his case.
1945. After the Second World War, he resumed his association with the Mosley Movement, by then called Union Movement
1948 Sep 1. Royal Engineers S. Capt. C. H. B. BUDD (106389) having exceeded the age limit relinquishes his commn.
1953 Jul 12. Living at Knockaverry Farm, Youghal
1967 Apr 8 . Died Eastbourne, Sussex,When Charles Bentinck Budd moved to Ireland he lived in Youghal, Co.Cork for a time probably in the early '50s. He lived in a house called Knockaverry Farm, overlooking Youghal Bay. When I was growing up my parents who moved to Knockaverry Farm told us that a former Blackshirt lived in the house prior to them and his name was Captain Budd. As far as I can discover he was probably there from the time of his move to Ireland till about 1953, What may also be of interest is that Youghal lies at the mouth of the Blackwater river about 30 miles downstream of Lismore Castle which is the Irish home of the Duke of Devonshire, perhaps one of the Mitfords recommended the area to him. Does anybody know where he lived until the time of his death in 1967?