Claude George Bowes-Lyon KG KT GCVO (1855 - 1944)

Born 14 Mar 1855 in Lowndes Square, Chelsea, London, England

Ancestors

Husband of Cecilia Nina (Cavendish-Bentinck) Bowes-Lyon — married 16 Jul 1881 in Petersham, Surrey, England

Descendants

Died 7 Nov 1944 at age 89 in Glamis, Forfar, Scotland

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Biography

Claude George Bowes Lyon 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne Lord of Glamis.

14th and 1st Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, 14th Earl in the peerage of Scotland and the 1st Earl in the peerage of the United Kingdom (1937).

Claude was born in Lowndes Square, London, the son of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and his wife, the former Frances Dora Smith. His younger brother Patrick Bowes-Lyon was a tennis player who won the 1887 Wimbledon doubles.

After being educated at Eton College he received a commission in the 2nd Life Guards in 1876, and served for six years until the year after his marriage. He was an active member of the Territorial Army and served as Honorary Colonel of the 4th/5th Battalion of the Black Watch.

Upon 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, an office he resigned when his daughter became Queen. He had a keen interest in forestry, and was one of the first to grow larch from seed in Britain. His estates had a large number of smallholders and he had a reputation for being unusually kind to his tenants. His contemporaries described him as an unpretentious man, often seen in "an old macintosh tied with a piece of twine". He worked his own land and enjoyed physical labour in the grounds of his estates. Visitors mistook him for a common labourer.

In 1923 his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married George V's second son, Prince Albert, Duke of York, and Lord Strathmore was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order to mark the marriage. Five years later he was made a Knight of the Thistle.

In 1936 his son-in-law's brother, Edward VIII, 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 (because members of the Peerage of Scotland did not automatically sit in the House of Lords, he had previously sat only as a Baron through the Barony of Bowes created for his father).

He married Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck, the eldest daughter of the Rev. Charles Cavendish-Bentinck (grandson of British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland) and his wife, Louisa (née Burnaby), on 16 July 1881 in Petersham, Surrey. The couple had ten children.

Lord Strathmore died of bronchitis on 7 November 1944, aged 89, at Glamis Castle.

Maternal grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.

Sources

• The Peerage: Claude George Bowes-Lyon
• Wikipedia Entry
• Cracorfts Peerage
• Book Title: The blood royal of Britain : being a roll of the living descendants of Edward IV and Henry VIII

• 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; online edn, Oct 2007 accessed 31 Oct 2017

• Find a Grave, database and images (www.findagrave.com/memorial/25123096/claude-george-bowes-lyon : accessed 16 August 2021), memorial page for Earl Claude George Bowes-Lyon II (14 Mar 1855–7 Nov 1944), Find a Grave Memorial ID 25123096, citing Glamis Churchyard, Glamis, Angus, Scotland ; Maintained by IrishDan (contributor 46810933) .