A Great War Military Cross recipient’s Queen’s South Africa Medal, 4 Clasps: Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901 awarded to Lieutenant the Honourable A.G.M.F. Howard, 3rd Battalion, Royal Lancaster Regiment, later a Captain in the Duke of Lancaster Yeomanry during the Great War who saw service in South Africa during the Boer War on operations in Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Transvaal. He would be serve as a Captain in the Duke of Lancaster Yeomanry during the Great War being awarded the Military Cross in the London Gazette of 3rd June 1919. He would resign his commission on 1st March 1921 being granted the rank of an earl’s younger son in the London Gazette of 3rd January 1930.
Queen’s South Africa Medal 1899-1902, 4 Clasps: Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901; engraved naming; (Lieut. A.G.M.F. HOWARD. Rl. Lanc. Rgt)
Condition: Good Very Fine
Algernon George Mowbray Frederick Howard was born on 15th September 1874. He was the son of the Honorary Frederick Charles Howard and Lady Constance Eleanora Caroline Finch-Hatton.
He would serve initially as a Second Lieutenant from 6th February 1900 and then subsequently as a Lieutenant from the 19th February 1901 in the Royal Lancaster Regiment in South Africa during the Boer War taking part in operations in Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Transvaal. Note he is not entitled to the clasp for South Africa 1901 and instead appears on the roll for the King’s South Africa Medal.
In March 1900 Battalion HQ of the 3rd Battalion, The King’s Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), under Colonel B.N. North, with three companies were holding Zand River Bridge, which not only commanded the railway but was a large supply depot, drove off a determined Boer attack and received Lord Kitchener’s commendation ‘for gallant conduct.’ A unit of Mounted Infantry was formed and saw service with columns which included an action at Ventersburg and captured a Boer laager at Zeegatacht near Brandfort in May 1900. By January 1901, holding a blockhouse line on the railway from Kroonstadt to Bloemfontein, they repulsed several Boer attacks and provided an armoured train unit which drover the enemy from a position at Huten Beck. By October 1901 the Battalion had been split into detachments, one of which under Lieutenant A.G.M.F. Howard engaged Theron’s Commando at Ceres, Cape Colony.
Then being appointed a Captain in the Duke of Lancaster Yeomanry, he would serve during the Great War being appointed a Captain on 28th September 1914, and then later being awarded a Military Cross in the London Gazette of 3rd June 1919 and would subsequently resign his commission from the 3rd Battalion, Royal Lancaster Regiment on 1st March 1921.
On 6th December 1929 he would be granted the rank of an earl’s younger son. A notice appearing in the London Gazette of 3rd January 1930:
‘The KING has been graciously pleased to ordain and declare that Algernon George Mowbray Frederick Howard, upon whom has been conferred the Decoration of the Military Cross, Captain the later the Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry, the only Brother of Gordon Frederick Henry Charles, Earl of Effingham, shall henceforth have hold and enjoy the same title, rank, place, pre-eminence and precedence as would have been due to him if his later father Frederick Charles Howard (commonly called the Honourable Frederick Charles Howard), Captain, Coldstream Guards, had survived his Brother, Henry, Earl of Effingham. And to command that the said order and declaration be registered in His Majesty’s College of Arms.’
The Honourable Algernon George Mowbray Frederick Howard died on 7th May 1950.
