Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne KG KT GCVO TD (
14 March 1855–7 November 1944) was a landowner and the maternal grandfather of
Queen Elizabeth II.
From
1937 he was known as "14th and 1st Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne", because he was the 14th Earl in the
peerage of Scotland but the 1st Earl in the
peerage of the United Kingdom.
He was born at Lowndes Square in
London, the son of
Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and his wife, the former
Frances Dora Smith.
After being educated at
Eton College he received a commission in the 2nd
Life Guards. He served for six years until the year after his marriage to
Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck on
16 July 1881, at
Petersham, Surrey.
The couple had ten children, of whom they were very fond. The Earl would part his moustache in a theatrical but courteous gesture before kissing them:
On 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, and Woolmers Park, near
Hertford. He was made
Lord Lieutenant of
Angus, an office he resigned when his daughter became Queen.
Despite The Earl's reservations about royalty, in
1923 his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married the King's second son
Prince Albert, Duke of York, and to mark the marriage Lord Strathmore was made a
Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. Five years later he was made a
Knight of the Thistle.
In
1936 his son-in-law's brother, King
Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, abdicated and his son-in-law became King. As the
Queen Consort's father, 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).
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. He was an active member of the
Territorial Army and served as Honorary Colonel of the 4th/5th Battalion of the
Black Watch. His younger brother,
Patrick Bowes-Lyon won the
1887 Wimbledon doubles.
The Earl 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. Later in life he became extremely deaf. Lord Strathmore died at the age of 89 at
Glamis Castle in
Angus of
bronchitis. (Lady Strathmore had died in
1938.) He was succeeded by his son,
Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis. 
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