Lumley followed his father into the military, passing out from the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned a
second lieutenant in the
11th Hussars on 26 January 1916, and was promoted to
lieutenant on 26 July 1917. He served in France during
World War I. He was demobilised on 3 June 1919, with the rank of lieutenant, but retained a reserve lieutenant's commission in the 11th Hussars, as well as being attached to the
Yorkshire Dragoons. From 1920 to 1921, he was attached to an Officer Training Corps (OTC) University Contingent, with the local rank of
captain. Lumley sat in the
House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for
Kingston upon Hull East 1922–29, then
York 1931–37. In 1923 he was
Parliamentary Private Secretary to
William Ormsby-Gore, from 1924 to 1926 to Sir
Austen Chamberlain and subsequently to
Anthony Eden. On 8 March 1931, he was promoted to captain in the reserves in both the 11th Hussars and the Yorkshire Dragoons. He was brevetted to the rank of
major in the Yorkshire Dragoons on 1 January 1937, and was awarded the Efficiency Decoration on 11 May. In 1937, he was appointed
Governor of Bombay, serving until 1943, when he was appointed Knight Grand Commander of the
Order of the Star of India. Upon his return from
India, Lumley served as acting
major-general in
World War II, serving as Chief of Civil Affairs,
War Office. Following the War, he continued his connections with the Army, as an honorary colonel. He succeeded to the
Earldom of Scarbrough in 1945 following the death of his uncle. He served as
Lord Chamberlain from 1952 to 1963 and
chancellor of the
University of Durham from 1958 to 1969. He was made a
Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter in 1948. Outside politics, the Earl had a keen interest in Asian and African studies. He presided over the Interdepartmental Commission of Enquiry on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies set up after the
Second World War to consider how Britain might maintain and increase the links it had built up during the war in the geographical areas under the Commission's consideration. The Commission's report, presented in 1947, argued for considerable strengthening of university departments' capacity to carry out research and training related to these areas, and for significant funds to be made available to this end. However, after five years of strong growth following the presentation of the Scarbrough report, in 1952 much of the funding was withdrawn. Lumley was initiated into
freemasonry on 3 May 1923 in
Apollo University Lodge No 357 in Oxford. From 1940 to 1943 he served as the District Grand Master of Bombay. From 1951 to 1967 he served as the
Grand Master of the
United Grand Lodge of England, during which time he was also made an honorary member of
Isaac Newton University Lodge when attending its centenary. Lumley, alongside
Eric James, Baron James of Rusholme, was a patron of the
Yorkshire Philosophical Society. ==Family==