| Lord Strathmore |
| THE TIMES |
| Wednesday, Nov 8, 1944 |
|
FATHER OF THE QUEEN We announce with very deep regret that the Earl of Strathmore, father of the Queen, died yesterday at Glamis Castle, Angus. The Right Hon. Sir Claude George Bowes-Lyon, K.G., K.T., G.C.V.O., T.D., (14th) Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, Viscount Lyon and Baron Glamis, Tannadyce, Sidlaw, and Strathdichtie, in the Peerage of Scotland; and Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, Baron Bowes, of Streatlam Castle in the County of Durham, and Lundale, in the County of York, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, was born on March 14, 1855, eldest son of the thirteenth earl, whom he succeeded in 1904. The founder of the Lyon family was Sir John Lyon, who married a daughter of King Robert II of Scotland, and was granted the lands of Glamis by that Sovereign in 1372. His descendant, the ninth Lord Glamis, was created Earl of Kinghorne by James I of England. Lord Kinghorne's grandson obtained a new charter in 1672 by which he and his heirs should be known as Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne. The fourth Earl had seven sons, of whom four succeeded to the Peerage, and the ninth earl married the heiress of George Bowes, of Streatlam Castle, the family thereafter assuming the surname of Bowes. From 1869 to 1872 Lord Strathmore (then Lord Glamis) was at Eton, in the Rev. Russell Day's house. and four years after leaving he was gazetted to a commission in the 2nd Life Guards. He resigned this the year after his marriage in 1881 to Miss Nina Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck, daughter of the Rev. C. W. F. Cavendish-Bentinck (a grandson of the third Duke of Portland). For the next 20 years Lord and Lady Glamis, by which style they were known, lived principally at St. Paul's Waldenbury, in Hertfordshire, a property which had come to the Bowes-Lyon family in the eighteenth century. The earl also owned Woolmers Park, near Hertford. After his succession to the peerage Glamis Castle became Lord Strathmore's principal home, and he succeeded his father in the Lord Lieutenancy of Angus, a position he held for 32 years. For many years he did valuable work as president of the Angus Territorial Army Association and served as honorary colonel of the 4th/5th Battalion, The Black Watch. He had conferred upon him the high honours of G.C.V.O. (1932), K.T. (1928), and K.G. (1937). |
Lord Strathmore was the head of one of the oldest and most famous Scottish families, and owned large territorial possessions both in England and Scotland.
He was a landowner who considered it his duty to care for the prosperity of his tenants and dependants.
In spit of heavily increased taxation he allowed no economies on anything which concerned the well-being of his estates or of those dependent on him for their livelihood.
In consequence he was looked up to in Scotland with that blend of respect and affection which was not dissimilar from the subject's feelings for his sovereign; and in those feelings affection certainly predominated, for there was nothing aloof or unapproachable about Lord Strathmore.
His manner - at once distinguished and deliberate - combined with a strikingly handsome appearance was for those who knew him well an embodiment of the noblest qualities of the British aristocracy.
To the general public he was naturally most familiar as the father of the Queen, but his youngest daughter's great position, and all the publicity inevitably entailed for his family, never altered his unostentatious and almost simple mode of life.
No account of Lord Strathmore would be complete which did not do justice to his gifts as a host and his capacity for putting at their ease the large company of his sons' friends who, before the war, went to Glamis for the shooting each autumn.
One of his chief pleasures was organizing a cricket team at Glamis, and in earlier years batsmen had the best of reasons for treating his bowling with respect.
He was also a frequent spectator at local football matches. Lord Strathmore and Lady Strathmore (who died in 1938) had 10 children, six sons and four daughters, of whom three sons and three daughters survive their father, the youngest daughter being the Queen. The eldest son Lord Glamis, who succeeds to the peerage, was born on September 22, 1884, and married in 1908 Lady Osbourne, daughter of the tenth Duke of Leeds. He went to Sandhurst and received a commission in the Scots Guards. Throughout the 1914-1918 war he served as a Major in The Black Watch, and was wounded. The new peer's elder son, Lieutenant the Master of Glamis, Scots Guards. was reported in March, 1942, to have been killed in action. His second son, Timothy, was born in March, 1918, twin with a sister Nancy Moira, and he had another daughter, Cecilia, born in 1912. |