Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne

Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th and 1st Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, KG, KT, GCVO, TD (14 March 1855 – 7 November 1944), styled as Lord Glamis from 1865 to 1904, was a British peer and landowner who was the father of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and the maternal grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.


The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne

In office
16 February 1904  7 November 1944
Preceded byClaude Bowes-Lyon
Succeeded byPatrick Bowes-Lyon
Personal details
Born
Claude George Bowes-Lyon

(1855-03-14)14 March 1855
London, England
Died7 November 1944(1944-11-07) (aged 89)
Glamis, Scotland
Spouse(s)
(m. 1881; died 1938)
Children
ParentsClaude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
Frances Dora Smith

Life and family

The Earl was born in Lowndes Square, London, the son of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and his wife, the former Frances Smith.[1] 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.[2] He was an active member of the Territorial Army and served as honorary colonel of the 4th/5th Battalion of the Black Watch.[2]

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, Gibside Hall and Streatlam Castle in County Durham and Woolmers Park, near Hertford.[2] He was made Lord Lieutenant of Angus,[nb 1] 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.[3] His contemporaries described him as an unpretentious man, often seen in "an old macintosh tied with a piece of twine".[4] He worked his own land and enjoyed physical labour on the grounds of his estates; visitors often mistook him for a common labourer.[5] He made his own cocoa for breakfast, and always had a jug of water by his place at dinner so he could dilute his own wine.[6]

Despite the Earl's reservations about royalty,[7] in 1923 his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married Prince Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary. 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.[8]

In 1936, his son-in-law became king and assumed the name George VI. As the father of the new queen, 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).[8] At the coronation of his daughter and son-in-law, the Earl and Countess sat in the royal box with Queen Mary and their shared granddaughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.

Later in life he became extremely deaf.[6] Lord Strathmore died of bronchitis on 7 November 1944, aged 89, at Glamis Castle.[9] (Lady Strathmore had died in 1938.[2]) He was succeeded by his son Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis.

Marriage and issue

He married Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck on 16 July 1881 in Petersham, Surrey.[1] The couple had ten children. The Earl would part his moustache in a theatrical but courteous gesture before kissing them:[10]

NameBirthDeathAgeNotes
The Hon. Violet Hyacinth Bowes-Lyon17 April 188217 October 189311 yearsShe died from diphtheria and was buried at St Andrew's Church, Ham.[11] She was never styled 'Lady' because she died before her father succeeded to the Earldom.
Lady Mary Frances Bowes-Lyon30 August 18838 February 196177 yearsShe married Sidney Elphinstone, 16th Lord Elphinstone; in 1910, and had issue.
Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis22 September 188425 May 194964 yearsHe married Lady Dorothy Osborne (daughter of George Osborne, 10th Duke of Leeds) in 1908, and had issue. In 1944, he became 15th and 2nd Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.
Lieutenant The Hon. John Bowes-Lyon1 April 18867 February 193043 yearsKnown as Jock,[12] he married The Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (daughter of Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton) in 1914, and had issue.
The Hon. Alexander Francis Bowes-Lyon14 April 188719 October 191124 yearsKnown as Alec,[12] he died in his sleep of a tumour at the base of the cerebrum, unmarried.[13]
Captain The Hon. Fergus Bowes-Lyon18 April 188927 September 191526 yearsHe married Lady Christian Dawson-Damer (daughter of Lionel Dawson-Damer, 5th Earl of Portarlington) in 1914, and had issue. He was killed in the early stages of the Battle of Loos.
Lady Rose Constance Bowes-Lyon6 May 189017 November 196777 yearsShe married William Leveson-Gower, 4th Earl Granville in 1916, and had issue.
Lieutenant-Colonel The Hon. Michael Claude Hamilton Bowes-Lyon1 October 18931 May 195359 yearsKnown as Mickie,[12] he was a prisoner of war (at Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp) during World War I.[14] He married Elizabeth Cator in 1928. She was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Prince Albert, Duke of York, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon on 26 April 1923.[15] They had issue, including Michael Bowes-Lyon, 17th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. He died of asthma and heart failure in Bedfordshire.
Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon4 August 190030 March 2002101 yearsIn 1923, she married the future King George VI, and had issue, including Queen Elizabeth II. She became queen consort in 1936, and in later life, after the death of her husband, she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
The Hon. Sir David Bowes-Lyon2 May 190213 September 196159 yearsHe married Rachel Clay in 1929, and had issue.

Ancestry

Arms

Coat of arms of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
Crest
An Earl's coronet
Escutcheon
Quarterly 1 and 4 argent a lion rampant azure, armed and langued gules within a double tressure flory counter-flory of the second (for Lyon); 2 and 3 ermine three bows stringed palewise in fess proper (for Bowes).
Symbolism
The Arms of the Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne are famous for being canting as they represent the name of the holders of the title: Bowes-Lyon in that they feature bows and lions.

Notes

  1. The county of Angus was called Forfarshire until 1928.

Footnotes

  1. White, Geoffrey and Cokayne, G. E., The Complete Peerage, St Catherine's Press, London, 1953; vol. XII, pp. 402–3.
  2. The Times (London), Wednesday, 8 November 1944, p. 7, col. C.
  3. Grant, F. J., revised by K. D. Reynolds, "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)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
  4. Forbes, p. 7.
  5. Forbes, pp. 8–9.
  6. Vickers, p. 5.
  7. Forbes, p. 166; Vickers, p. 45.
  8. Mosley, Charles, (ed.) Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, Burke's Peerage and Gentry LLC, 2003; vol. III, pp. 3783–4.
  9. Vickers, p. 247.
  10. Vickers, p. 4.
  11. Vickers, p. 7.
  12. Forbes, p. 3.
  13. Vickers, p. 13.
  14. Vickers, p. 320.
  15. "The Queen Mother in pictures". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  16. Davies, Edward J. (2010–12) "Walsh of Redbourn", Genealogists' Magazine, 30: pp. 241–245.

References

  • Forbes, Grania, My Darling Buffy: The Early Life of The Queen Mother (Headline Book Publishing, 1999) ISBN 978-0-7472-7387-5
  • Vickers, Hugo, Elizabeth: The Queen Mother (Arrow Books/Random House, 2006) ISBN 978-0-09-947662-7
Honorary titles
Preceded by
Claude Bowes-Lyon
Lord Lieutenant of Angus
1904–1936
Succeeded by
The Earl of Airlie
Peerage of Scotland
Preceded by
Claude Bowes-Lyon
Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
1904–1944
Succeeded by
Patrick Bowes-Lyon
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
1937–1944
Succeeded by
Patrick Bowes-Lyon
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