Name Charles 20th | ||
Charles Gore Hay, 20th Earl of Erroll, KT, CB (7 February 1852 – 8 July 1927), styled Lord Hay until 1891, was a Scottish soldier and Conservative politician.
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Biography
Hay was the son of William Harry Hay, 19th Earl of Erroll, and his wife Eliza Amelia Gore. His maternal grandfather was General the Hon. Sir Charles Gore, KH, GCB (1793 – 1869), a Waterloo officer, a son of the 2nd Earl of Arran and a brother of the Duchess of Inverness.
He succeeded his father in the earldom in 1891.
Lord Hay was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards on 7 July 1869. He was promoted to lieutenant on 19 August 1871, to captain on 11 September 1875, to major on 1 July 1881, to lieutenant-colonel on 24 September 1887, and to colonel on 18 January 1895. Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in late 1899, he volunteered for active service and was commissioned in the Imperial Yeomanry. He took part in the Battle of Paardeberg (February 1900), following which he was in charge of prisoners from Piet Cronjé's army. In early March 1900 he took command of a yeomanry brigade in the South Africa Field Force, with the rank of brigadier general. The following year he was in June 1901 appointed Assistant Adjutant-General. He was later an Honorary Major-General in the British Army and a Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Royal Horse Guards.
Lord Erroll served in the Conservative administration of Arthur Balfour as a Lord-in-Waiting (government whip in the House of Lords) from 1903 to 1905. In 1901 he was made a Knight of the Thistle.
Family
Lord Erroll married in 1875 Mary Caroline, daughter of Edmund L'Estrange by his wife Harriet Susan Beresford Lumley-Savile, sister of Richard George Lumley-Savile, 9th Earl of Scarbrough, and daughter of Frederick Lumley-Savile and of Charlotte De la Poer-Beresford (a daughter of George de la Poer Beresford, Bishop of Kilmore).
He died in July 1927, aged 75, and was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest son Victor Hay. Lady Erroll died in 1934.