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Osborne Beauclerk, 12th Duke of St Albans

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The Duke of St Albans
Born
Lord Osborne de Vere Beauclerk

(1874-10-16)16 October 1874
Died2 March 1964(1964-03-02) (aged 89)
Spouse
(m. 1918; died 1953)
Parent(s)William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans
Grace Bernal-Osborne
RelativesCharles Beauclerk, 11th Duke of St Albans (half-brother)
Ralph Bernal Osborne (grandfather)
William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans (grandfather)

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.

Early life

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Lord 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

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Lord 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

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On 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

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References

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  1. ^ 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
  2. ^ Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107 ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 3461. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1.
  3. ^ Hart′s Army list, 1902
  4. ^ "The War - officers returning home". The Times. No. 36628. London. 3 December 1901. p. 10.
  5. ^ "No. 27476". The London Gazette. 23 September 1902. p. 6078.
  6. ^ "No. 27505". The London Gazette. 19 December 1902. p. 8761.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ Murray, Peter (1994). Home from the Hill: Three Gentlemen Adventurers. TouchWood Editions. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-920663-30-1. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  9. ^ Burke's Peerage and Baronetage
  10. ^ Auden's Ghost's: Osborne Beauclerk, Stanford University
  11. ^ The House of Nell Gwyn: Fortunes of the Beauclerk Family, Donald Adamson (William Kimber, Ldn 1974)
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Peerage of England
Preceded by Duke of St Albans
1934–1964
Succeeded by