Viscount Falkland

A carte-de-visite portrait of Viscount Falkland (1803-1884).

The British colonial administrator and Liberal politician Lucius Bentinck Cary was born on 5 November 1803, the son of Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland, and his wife, Christiana Anton. He succeeded as 10th Viscount Falkland in 1808 at the age of fice after his father was killed in a duel.

A Scottish reformer, in 1831 he was elected to the House of Lords as a Scottish representative peer. The following year he was created Baron Hunsdon of Scutterskelfe in the County of York, which as an English title gave him an automatic seat in the House of Lords. Five years later he was elected to the Privy Council.

Falkland became Governor of Nova Scotia in 1840 after the recall of Sir Colin Campbell. He opposed the movement of Joseph Howe for responsible government leading to Howe threatening to horsewhip him. He restructured the colony’s Executive Council by including reformers in the body, which had previously been a Tory domain, but he resisted the demand that the majority party in the legislature be permitted to form a government.

When his term ended in 1846, Falkland returned to England. He held office in the Whig government of Lord John Russell as Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard (Deputy Chief Whip in the House of Lords) from 1846 to 1848. He was next appointed Governor of Bombay, a post he occupied until 1853, when he returned to England, where he served as a magistrate in Yorkshire.

Lord Falkland married Lady Amelia FitzClarence on 27 December 1830 at the Royal Pavilion. His wife was one of the illegitimate daughters of King William IV and his mistress, Mrs Dorothy Jordan. They had one son, Lucius William Charles Frederick Cary (1831-1871), Master of Falkland, who married Sarah Christiana Keighly, but died childless.

Lord Falkland’s first wife died in 1858. He married secondly, on 10 November 1859, Elizabeth Catherine, daughter of Major-General Joseph Gubbins and widow of the 9th Duke of St. Albans.

Lord Falkland died at Montpellier on 12 March 1884, aged 80. As his only son had predeceased him, he was succeeded in his titles by his younger brother, Admiral Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London in 1860.