HE IS one of Britain’s most celebrated aristocrats, whose distinguished family story is deeply interwoven into Hampshire’s history.

Now Lord Montagu of Beaulieu has made a landmark request in his will to ensure that relatives keep the family’s triple-barrelled surname for generations to come.

The flamboyant peer, who died last year aged 88, has left the bulk of his £22million fortune in trust for his family.

And the aristocrat who founded of the National Motor Museum at his 7,000-acre ancestral estate in Beaulieu, in the New Forest, has issued a plea that his surname – Douglas-Scott-Montagu – continue for generations to come.

It comes after the bisexual peer was set to receive a posthumous pardon along with thousands of gay and bisexual men imprisoned for “unnatural” acts before homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967.

In a clause in his will, Lord Montagu reveals his wish for his principal heir – eldest son Ralph, 55 – to continue the name.

He also wants the husband of any woman who becomes his main heir to adopt the surname by deed poll.

The triple-barrelled name was created in 1885 when Lord Montagu’s grandfather Henry, became a peer.

His family name has been Montagu-Douglas-Scott but Henry changed the order and instructed his son to keep it.

The new Lord Montagu said he would honour the tradition.

In a statement he sad: “This provision is completely understood and expected. Douglas-Scott-Montagu is my surname as it was my father’s. But because my title is Lord Montagu of Beaulieu people will call me Ralph Montagu, just as my father was called Edward Montagu.”

The late Lord Montagu was jailed for “homosexual offences” 1954 following an eight-day trial at what was then Winchester Assizes.

His prosecution provoked a wave of public sympathy, with many claiming it amounted to little more than a witch-hunt.

His nightmare began the previous year, when he was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage boy working as a guide on the Beaulieu Estate.

He was eventually cleared, only to be re-arrested weeks later along with two friends.

All three were subsequently convicted of homosexual offences involving RAF airmen.

The bisexual peer was sentenced to a year in prison in a move that spelled the end of his engagement to the actress Anne Gage.

Released after eight months he began to rebuild his life, welcoming royalty and other VIPs to Beaulieu and turning his newly launched motor museum into one of the UK’s top attractions.

The fall-out from what was dubbed “the Montagu case” had a direct influence on the British legal system.

In 1957 a government committee recommended that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private be legalised and the proposals became law a decade later.