Kenelm Charles Everard Digby Pepys, 8th Earl of Cottenham (27 November 1948 – 20 October 2000) was an English peer, baronet, cricketer, equestrian, business man, and designer. Known until 1968 as Viscount Crowhurst, he was later known to his friends as Charlie Cottenham.^[1] He was a member of the House of Lords from 1969 until 1999.

The son of Digby Pepys, 7th Earl of Cottenham, and his wife Lady Angela Larnach-Nevill, a daughter of Guy Larnach-Nevill, 4th Marquess of Abergavenny,^[2] he was a second cousin seven times removed of the diarist Samuel Pepys^[3] and was educated at Eton College.^[2]

On 12 May 1968, aged nineteen, he succeeded his father as Earl of Cottenham, Viscount Crowhurst, of Crowhurst, Surrey, Baron Cottenham, of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, and as a Baronet, of Wimpole Street. The family seat was then at Priory Manor, near Kington St Michael, Wiltshire.^[2][3] On 15 March 1975 Cottenham married Sarah Lombard-Hobson, daughter of Captain Samuel Richard Le Hunte Lombard-Hobson CVO OBE RN, of Sherrington.^[4]

Cottenham played cricket for Eton and for Northamptonshire Second XI as a fast bowler.^[5] He toured the West Indies in 1970 with the Duke of Norfolk's XI.^[6] He was a three day eventer, competing at Badminton and Burghley Horse Trials, and representing Great Britain overseas. He gave up competing after his wife had a bad fall.^[7][8] In 1984, after retiring from eventing, Cottenham lent his yard at Priory Manor to his friend Mark Todd, who brought with him his horse Charisma.^[1] They won an Olympic Gold Medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.^[9]

Cottenham ran a successful chain of English-language schools.^[5]

He and his wife had three children:^[4]

• Lady Georgina Marye Pepys (born 1981)
• Mark John Henry Pepys, 9th Earl of Cottenham (born 1983), m. Juan Du, of Kunming, China
  • Charlie Thomas Pepys, Viscount Crowhurst (born 2020)
• Hon. Sam Richard Pepys (born 1986)

In 2007, Cottenham's widow married Richard George Ford, a kinsman of Viscount Hampden.^[10]