Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
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Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne KG KT GCVO TD (14 March 1855–7 November 1944) was a landowner and the maternal grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.
From 1937 Bowes-Lyon was known as "14th and 1st Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne," because he was the 14th Earl in the peerage of Scotland but the 1st Earl in the peerage of the United Kingdom.
He was born at Lowndes Square in London, the son of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and his wife, the former Frances Smith.
After being educated at Eton College he received a commission in the 2nd Life Guards (British Army). He served for six years until the year after his marriage to Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck on 16 July 1881, at Petersham, Surrey.
The couple had ten children:
On succeeding his father to the Earldom on 16 February 1904, he inherited large estates in Scotland and England, including Glamis Castle, St Paul's Walden Bury, and Woolmers Park, near Hertford. He was made Lord Lieutenant of Angus<ref>The county of Angus was called Forfarshire until 1928</ref>, an office he resigned when his daughter became Queen.
In 1923 his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married the King's second son Prince Albert, Duke of York, and to mark the marriage Lord Strathmore was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. Five years later he was made a Knight of the Thistle.
In 1936 his son-in-law's brother, King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, abdicated and his son-in-law became King. As the Queen Consort's father, he was created a Knight of the Garter and Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in the Coronation Honours of 1937. This enabled him to sit in the House of Lords as an Earl (he had previously sat only as a Baron through the Barony of Bowes created for his father).
He had a keen interest in forestry, and was one of the first to grow larch from seed in Britain. He was an active member of the Territorial Army and served as Honorary Colonel of the 4th/5th Battalion of the Black Watch. His younger brother, Patrick Bowes-Lyon won the 1887 Wimbledon doubles.
Lord Strathmore died at the age of 89 at Glamis Castle in Angus (Lady Strathmore had died in 1938). He was succeeded by his son, Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis.
[edit] Sources
- F. J. Grant, Lyon, Claude George Bowes-, fourteenth earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the peerage of Scotland, and first earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the peerage of the United Kingdom (1855–1944), Rev. K. D. Reynolds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- The Times (London), Wednesday, Nov 08, 1944; p. 7; col. C
- Geoffrey White and George Edward Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, St Catherine’s Press, London, 1953; vol. XII, p. 402-3
- Charles Mosley (ed.) Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, Burke’s Peerage and Gentry LLC, 2003; vol. III, p. 3783-4.
[edit] Footnote
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| Preceded by: Claude Bowes-Lyon | Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne | Succeeded by: Patrick Bowes-Lyon |
| Preceded by: New Creation | Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne |
