Osborne de Vere Beauclerk, 12th Duke of St Albans (16 October 1874 – 2 March 1964) was a British peer and Army officer. He was styled Lord Osborne Beauclerk from 1874 to 1934.
The Duke of St Albans | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lord Osborne de Vere Beauclerk 16 October 1874 |
| Died | 2 March 1964 (aged 89) |
| Spouse | |
| Parent(s) | William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans Grace Bernal-Osborne |
| Relatives | Charles Beauclerk, 11th Duke of St Albans (half-brother) Ralph Bernal Osborne (grandfather) William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans (grandfather) |
Early life
editLord Osborne Beauclerk was the son of William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans, and, his second wife, Grace Bernal-Osborne of County Tipperary, Ireland, daughter of Ralph Bernal Osborne, descendant of the politician and actor Ralph Bernal. From his father's first marriage, he had an elder half-brother, Charles Beauclerk, 11th Duke of St Albans, who suffered from severe depression all his life.[1]
His father was the only son of William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans, and Elizabeth Catherine, daughter of Major General Joseph Gubbins.[2]
Career
editLord Osborne (known as Obby) was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 17th Lancers on 7 December 1895 and promoted to lieutenant on 4 July 1896. He served with his regiment in South Africa during the Second Boer War, during which he was promoted to captain on 1 July 1901,[3] and returned to the United Kingdom in December 1901.[4] Following his return, he resigned from the army in September 1902,[5] and was appointed captain of the South Nottinghamshire Hussars, a Yeomanry regiment, on 20 December 1902.[6]
In 1911 and 1913 he set off on a trip to British Columbia, Canada where he was involved in a prospective mining investment at Cassiar, British Columbia; part of his time there was spent camping with partners British travelogue writer Warburton Pike and the American mining engineer Marshall Latham Bond.[7] At the outbreak of World War I, Captain Beauclerk was appointed aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, serving in France.
Upon the death of his elder half-brother on 19 September 1934, he succeeded to the family titles and estates.[8]
Personal life
editOn 19 August 1918, he married Beatrix Beresford, Dowager Marchioness of Waterford, GBE, DStJ, and daughter of the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne. He succeeded his half-brother in the family titles in 1934.[9]
In his late eighties, St Albans spent a month travelling throughout America on a Greyhound unlimited travel pass.[10]
He died in 1964, aged 89 without children, when the titles devolved upon his second cousin, Charles St Albans who succeeded as the 13th Duke.[11]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Peter Murray (1994). Home from the Hill: Three Gentlemen Adventurers. TouchWood Editions. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-0-920663-30-1.
The book calls him Buford, rather than Burford or St Albans
- ^ Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107 ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 3461. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1.
- ^ Hart′s Army list, 1902
- ^ "The War - officers returning home". The Times. No. 36628. London. 3 December 1901. p. 10.
- ^ "No. 27476". The London Gazette. 23 September 1902. p. 6078.
- ^ "No. 27505". The London Gazette. 19 December 1902. p. 8761.
- ^ TIMES, Special Cable to THE NEW YORK (4 May 1914). "Lord Osborne Beauclerk arrives in New York". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
- ^ Murray, Peter (1994). Home from the Hill: Three Gentlemen Adventurers. TouchWood Editions. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-920663-30-1. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
- ^ Burke's Peerage and Baronetage
- ^ Auden's Ghost's: Osborne Beauclerk, Stanford University
- ^ The House of Nell Gwyn: Fortunes of the Beauclerk Family, Donald Adamson (William Kimber, Ldn 1974)
