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

Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th and 1st Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne (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.

Biography

Early life

Claude George Bowes-Lyon was born in Lowndes Square, London, the son of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and the former Frances Smith.<ref name="cp">White, Geoffrey and Cokayne, G. E., The Complete Peerage, St Catherine's Press, London, 1953; vol. XII, pp. 402–3.</ref> 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.<ref name="times">The Times (London), Wednesday, 8 November 1944, p. 7, col. C.</ref> He was an active member of the Territorial Army and served as honorary colonel of the 4th/5th Battalion of the Black Watch.<ref name="times" />

Estates and inheritance

File:Claude George Bowes Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.jpg

Portrait by Philip de László, 1931

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.<ref name="times" /> The valuation of the entailed Strathmore Estates was £716,150 for the assessment of death duties following his father's death in 1904.<ref name="EveningGazette1904Inventory">Template:Cite news</ref>

He was made Lord Lieutenant of Angus,<ref group="nb">The county of Angus was called Forfarshire until 1928.</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref> His contemporaries described him as an unpretentious man, often seen in "an old macintosh tied with a piece of twine".<ref>Forbes, p. 7.</ref> He worked his own land and enjoyed physical labour on the grounds of his estates; visitors often mistook him for a common labourer.<ref>Forbes, pp. 8–9.</ref> 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.<ref name=v5/>

In 1922 The Daily Telegraph reported that Lord Strathmore was selling the Streatlam Castle estate on the Yorkshire and Durham borders; the asking price for the Castle and 1,198 surrounding acres was reportedly £37,500, with an option to purchase the remaining 4,806 acres.<ref name="DailyTelegraph1922HousesEstates">Template:Cite news</ref>

London homes

Prior to 1906 Lord Strathmore and his family used a flat in Grosvenor Gardens as their London residence; following his succession to the Earldom in 1904, in 1906 he acquired the lease of a large townhouse at No. 20 St James's Square from Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 7th Bt,<ref name="Forrest1986p135_and_182">Template:Cite book</ref> which remained as the family's London residence until 1920.<ref name="Forrest1986p134">Template:Cite book</ref> Strathmore was elected as one of the Trustees of St James's Square in 1908.<ref name="Forrest1986p134" /> A temporary lease was then taken over a house in Eaton Square, and by April 1921 a lease of 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair had been acquired and renovations were underway in preparation for the Bowes-Lyon family's occupation of the house.<ref name="CountingOnesBlessings2013p146">Template:Cite book</ref> The family were residing at Bruton Street when in London by March 1922.<ref name="CountingOnesBlessings2013p98">Template:Cite book</ref> Strathmore sold the lease of 17 Bruton Street in early 1929; the Evening Standard reported on 26 March that the Strathmores would vacate the property in mid-April of that year, and that the reported purchase price of the house's freehold was £26,000.<ref name="EveningStandard1929Sold">Template:Cite news</ref>

By January 1930 Lord and Lady Strathmore had taken a new London residence at No. 84 Eaton Square,<ref name="DailyTelegraph1930EatonSquare">Template:Cite news</ref> which they continued to occupy until Lady Strathmore's death in 1938.<ref name="WesternMail1938QueenMother">Template:Cite news</ref> During the late 1930s Lord Strathmore also leased an apartment in Cumberland Mansions, Marylebone.<ref name="MontrealStar1938QueensMother">Template:Cite news</ref>

Marriage and family

He married Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck on 16 July 1881 in Petersham, Surrey.<ref name="cp" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The couple had ten children. The Earl would part his moustache in a theatrical, but courteous gesture, before kissing them:<ref>Vickers, p. 4.</ref>

Name	Birth	Death	Age	Notes
The Hon. Violet Hyacinth Bowes-Lyon	17 April 1882	17 October 1893	11 years	She died from diphtheria and was buried at St Andrew's Church, Ham.<ref>Vickers, p. 7.</ref> She was never styled 'Lady' because she died before her father succeeded to the Earldom.
Lady Mary Frances Bowes-Lyon	30 August 1883	8 February 1961	77 years	She married Sidney Elphinstone, 16th Lord Elphinstone; in 1910, and had issue.
Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis	Template:Nowrap	25 May 1949	64 years	He 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-Lyon	1 April 1886	7 February 1930	43 years	Known as Jock,<ref name="Forbes3">Forbes, p. 3.</ref> 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-Lyon	14 April 1887	19 October 1911	24 years	Known as Alec,<ref name="Forbes3"/> he died in his sleep of a tumour at the base of the cerebrum, unmarried.<ref>Vickers, p. 13.</ref>
Captain The Hon. Fergus Bowes-Lyon	18 April 1889	Template:Nowrap	26 years	He married Lady Christian Norah Dawson-Damer (daughter of George 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-Lyon	6 May 1890	17 November 1967	77 years	She married William Leveson-Gower, 4th Earl Granville in 1916, and had issue.
Lieutenant-Colonel The Hon. Michael Claude Hamilton Bowes-Lyon	1 October 1893	1 May 1953	59 years	Known as Mickie,<ref name="Forbes3"/> he was a prisoner of war (at Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp) during World War I.<ref>Vickers, p. 320.</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref> Their children were Fergus Bowes-Lyon, 17th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, Lady Mary Colman, Lady Patricia Tetley and Albemarle Bowes-Lyon.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He died of asthma and heart failure in Bedfordshire.
Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon	4 August 1900	30 March 2002	101 years	In 1923, she married the Duke of York, 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-Lyon	2 May 1902	13 September 1961	59 years	He married Rachel Clay in 1929, and had issue.

Father of the Queen Consort

Despite the Earl's reservations about royalty,<ref>Forbes, p. 166; Vickers, p. 45.</ref> in April 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. His granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), was born at his home, 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair in April 1926. In 1928, he was made a Knight of the Thistle.<ref name="bp">Mosley, Charles, (ed.) Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, Burke's Peerage and Gentry LLC, 2003; vol. III, pp. 3783–4.</ref>

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 Companion of the Garter and the 1st Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, a United Kingdom peerage in the Coronation Honours of 1937 (although he was the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, which was a Scottish title). 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).<ref name="bp" /> 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 life and death

Later in life, the Earl became extremely deaf.<ref name=v5>Vickers, p. 5.</ref> Lord Strathmore died of bronchitis on 7 November 1944, aged 89, at Glamis Castle.<ref>Vickers, p. 247.</ref> (Lady Strathmore had died in 1938.<ref name="times" />) His will was proved for probate in August 1945, with a personal estate valued at £75,955.<ref name="BirminghamPost1945StrathmoreWills">Template:Cite news</ref>

He was succeeded by his son, Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis.

References

• Forbes, Grania, My Darling Buffy: The Early Life of The Queen Mother (Headline Book Publishing, 1999) Template:ISBN
• Vickers, Hugo, Elizabeth: The Queen Mother (Arrow Books/Random House, 2006) Template:ISBN

External links

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