Captain the Earl of Kilmorey PC(NI), OBE, DL, VRD, RNVR

Captain the Earl of Kilmorey PC(NI), OBE, DL, VRD, RNVR
Title:Captain the Earl of
Surname:Kilmorey
Post-nominals:PC(NI), OBE, DL, VRD, RNVR
Year elected:1918
Last year on list:1950
MembershipMember

Captain Francis Charles Adelbert Henry Needham, 4th Earl of Kilmorey PC (NI) OBE ADC DL (26 November 1883 – 11 January 1961), styled Viscount Newry until 1915, was a Royal Navy officer and Anglo-Irish peer.

Kilmorey was the eldest son of Francis Needham, 3rd Earl of Kilmorey, and Ellen Constance Baldock. He was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

He was from a prominent Ulster family with roots in Cheshire.

He was commissioned into the 3rd (Militia) Battalion, King's Shropshire Light Infantry in 1901, and in March 1902 transferred to the 1st Life Guards as a Second Lieutenant.  He was promoted Lieutenant again in 1904 and Captain in 1907.  He resigned his commission in 1911.

He returned to the Army during the First World War, reaching the rank of Major.

In 1930 he was appointed Captain in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was the second Commanding Officer of HMS Caroline, the RNR base in Belfast, where his photograph can be seen today.  From 1930 to his retirement in 1946 he was commanding officer of the Ulster Division of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve.  He was appointed an Officer of the Military Division of the Order of the British Empire in the 1936 Birthday Honours.

He also served as High Sheriff of County Down in 1913, as Lord Lieutenant of County Down from 1949 to 1959 and as Vice-Admiral of Ulster from 1937 to 1961.

From 1916 until his death, Kilmorey sat in the
House of Lords as an Irish Representative Peer, becoming the last surviving Irish representative Peer.  In 1936 he was admitted to the Privy Council of Northern Ireland.

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