Earl of Cardigan, 66, is hunted by cops after failing to turn up to court over car crash

THE Earl of Cardigan is being hunted by cops after he failed to turn up to court to face allegations of failing to stop after a car crash.

David Brudenell-Bruce was accused of crashing his BMW 535I while in a hospital car park, causing damage to a rear wheel arch and the bumper, and then leaving the scene.

The 66-year-old also faces charges of using the vehicle without insurance and driving without due care and attention on November 20, last year, in Savernake, Wilts.

However, after he failed to appear at Salisbury Magistrates’ Court, Wilts, last week, a warrant for his arrest was issued.

A spokeswoman for the court said: “He did not attend the hearing, so magistrates issued a warrant for his arrest.”

While a spokesman for Wiltshire Police said: “I can confirm a warrant has been issued for Mr Brudenell-Bruce’s arrest and we are the Force which will be carrying that out.”

Brudenell-Bruce is the father of The Voice star Bo Bruce, who finished runner up in the 2012 series of the hit show and was signed by Mercury Records, releasing her album Before I Sleep.

She entered rehab in September 2013 to deal with ‘personal issues’, having lost her mother, Rosamond, to pancreatic cancer just weeks after her series of The Voice ended.

Her Eton-educated father is a distant descendent of Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII, and has been the Hereditary Warden of the only privately owned forest in England, the Savernake Forest, Wilts, since 1987.

His family trust granted a lease to an American firm in 2005 to turn his historic ancestral home into a luxury golf resort, but the firm went bust in the recession.

In the following row between the Earl and the trustees of the Savernake Estate, Brudenell-Bruce was embroiled in a bitter dispute over plans to sell family silver.

He also ended up in court in 2013, accused of assaulting trustee John Moore after losing a High Court legal battle to stop paintings being sold. However, he was cleared by magistrates.

In 2013, he claimed he was so broke because he no longer had access to his own money that he had been forced to take up job as a delivery driver and was even on Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Brudenell-Bruce was finally able to access his family’s money again in 2017, when he won a High Court case to oust the trustees he had hired to manage it.