Early life Claude George Bowes-Lyon was born on 14 March 1855 in
Lowndes Square, London, the son of
Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and the former
Frances 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. 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 on the grounds of his estates; visitors often mistook him for a common labourer. 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.
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 Baronet, which remained as the family's London residence until 1920. Strathmore was elected as one of the Trustees of St James's Square in 1908. The family were residing at Bruton Street when in London by March 1922. 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. By January 1930 Lord and Lady Strathmore had taken a new London residence at No. 84 Eaton Square, which they continued to occupy until Lady Strathmore's death in 1938. During the late 1930s Lord Strathmore also leased an apartment in Cumberland Mansions,
Marylebone.
Marriage and family He married
Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck on 16 July 1881 in
Petersham, Surrey. The couple had ten children. The Earl would part his moustache in a theatrical, but courteous gesture, before kissing them:
Father of the Queen Consort Despite the Earl's reservations about royalty, 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. 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). Later in life, the Earl became extremely
deaf. Lord Strathmore died of
bronchitis on 7 November 1944, aged 89, at
Glamis Castle. (Lady Strathmore had died in 1938. He outlived four of his ten children and was succeeded by his son,
Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis. ==Arms==