Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne
Lady Cecilia Nina Cavendish - Bentinck, better known as Nina Cecilia Bowes -Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne GCVO, GBE, DStJ ( born September 11, 1862 in London, † June 23, 1938 ibid ) was a British aristocrat and the grandmother and godmother of Queen Elizabeth II
Life
Cecilia Nina was the eldest daughter of three children of the Reverend Charles William Frederick Cavendish - Bentinck (1817-1865) and his second wife Caroline Louisa Burnaby (1832-1918), eldest daughter of the English landowner and High Sheriff of Leicestershire Edwyn Burnaby and the Lady Anne Caroline Salisbury. She was the great-granddaughter of British Prime Minister William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland and was a descendant of King Henry VII of the House of Tudor.
On July 16, 1881 married in London the Scottish aristocrat and officer of the Life Guards Sir Claude George Bowes -Lyon, Lord Glamis ( 1855-1944 ), a son of Claude Bowes -Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and its wife Frances Dora Smith. The couple lived alternately in London and at Glamis Castle, the Scottish ancestral home of the Bowes-Lyon family. The marriage, which by all accounts was harmoniously, were ten children were born:
- Violet Hyacinth (1882-1893, died of diphtheria )
- Mary Frances (1883-1961) ∞ 1910 Sidney Buller - Fullerton - Elphinstone, 16th Lord Elphinstone
- Patrick (1884-1949), Lord Glamis, and later 15th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne ∞ 1908 Lady Dorothy Beatrix Godolphin Osborne
- John Herbert (1886-1930) ∞ 1914 The Honourable Fenella Hepburn - Stuart -Forbes - Trefusis
- Alexander Francis (1887-1911, died of a brain tumor)
- Fergus (1889-1915, fallen) ∞ 1914 Lady Christian Norah Dawson - Damer
- Rose Constance (1890-1967) ∞ 1916 Vice Admiral William Leveson - Gower, 4th Earl Granville
- Michael Claude Hamilton (1893-1953) ∞ 1928 Elizabeth Cator
- Elizabeth Angela Marguerite (1900-2002) ∞ 1923 Prince Albert, Duke of York, later King George VI. of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the last Emperor of India, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations.
- David (1902-1961) ∞ 1929 Rachel Pauline
During the First World War Glamis Castle served as a hospital and sanatorium for wounded soldiers. At this time, doctors discovered at Lady Bowes -Lyon and cancer in October 1921, the surgical removal of the uterus ( hysterectomy) was performed. In the following years she lived in seclusion on the ancestral home of the Bowes-Lyon family. At the wedding of her granddaughter Anne Bowes -Lyon in April 1938 Lady Bowes -Lyon suffered a heart attack, which led to her died eight weeks later. Their remains were four days later buried in the family vault at Glamis Castle.