Princess Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood was a member of the British Royal
Family; she was the third child and only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary.
She was the sixth holder of the title of Princess Royal.
Mary held the title of princess with the style Highness from birth as the then great-granddaughter
of the British sovereign, and later Her Royal Highness, as the granddaughter and finally
daughter of the Sovereign.
After her marriage she held the title of Viscountess Lascelles and, from 1929, Countess of Harewood.
Early life Birth
Princess Mary was born at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England.
Her parents were the future George V and Mary of Teck.
Her father was the eldest surviving son of the future Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark.
Mary was named after her paternal great-grandmother, her paternal grandmother, the Princess of
Wales, and her maternal grandmother, Princess Mary Adelaide.
Since she was born on the same day as her deceased grandaunt Alice, Grand Duchess of
Hesse and by Rhine, the name Alice was added in.
She was always known by the last of her Christian names, Mary.
As a great-grandchild of the British monarch, she was styled Her Highness Princess Mary
of York.
In 1898, the Queen passed letters patent granting the children of the Duke and Duchess of York
the style, Royal Highness.
Mary was then styled Her Royal Highness Princess Mary of York.
She was fifth in the line of succession at the time of her birth.
Her baptism took place at St Mary Magdalene's Church near Sandringham on 7 June 1897 by
William Dalrymple Maclagan, Archbishop of York.
Her godparents were: the Queen of the United Kingdom; the King of the Hellenes; the Dowager
Empress of Russia; the Prince and Princess of Wales; the Duchess of Teck; Princess Victoria
of Wales; and Prince Francis of Teck.
Education Princess Mary was educated by governesses,
but shared some lessons with her brothers, Prince Edward, Prince Albert, and Prince Henry.
She became fluent in German and French and developed a lifelong interest in horses and
horse racing.
Princess Mary and her husband Lord Harewood regularly rode with the Bramham Moor Hunt
where he was Master of the Hunt.
Her first state appearance was at the coronation of her parents at Westminster Abbey on 11
June 1911.
Royal duties
During World War I, Princess Mary visited hospitals and welfare organizations with her
mother; assisting with projects to give comfort to British servicemen and assistance to their
families.
One of these projects was Princess Mary's Christmas Gift Fund, through which £100,000
worth of gifts was sent to all British soldiers and sailors for Christmas, 1914.
This initiative was revived in 2005 by the charity uk4u-Thanks!.
She took an active role in promoting the Girl Guide movement, the VADs, and the Land Girls.
In June 1918, following an announcement in The Gentlewoman, she began a nursing course
at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, working two days a week in the Alexandra Ward.
Princess Mary's public duties reflected her concerns with nursing, the Girl Guide movement,
and the Women's Services.
She became honorary president of the British Girl Guide Association in 1920, a position
she held until her death.
It was reported in July 2013 that British Pathe had discovered newsreel film of a 1927
visit by Princess Mary to the Young Women's Christian Association in Hunslet, Leeds.
She is filmed being greeted and then farewelled by the ancestors of Catherine, Duchess of
Cambridge; Sir Charles Lupton and his brother Hugh Lupton, both of whom had been Lord Mayor
of Leeds.
In 1926, she became the commandant-in-chief of the British Red Cross Detachments.
Marriage and children
On 28 February 1922, Princess Mary married Henry Charles George, Viscount Lascelles,
the elder son of Henry Lascelles, 5th Earl of Harewood, and Lady Florence Bridgeman,
daughter of Orlando Bridgeman, 3rd Earl of Bradford of Weston Park.
Their wedding at Westminster Abbey was the first royal occasion in which Lady Elizabeth
Bowes-Lyon, a friend of Princess Mary's and one of the bridesmaids, participated.
The Princess was 24, Lord Lascelles was 39.
Princess Mary and Lord Lascelles had two sons: George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood; married,
1949, Marion Stein; divorced 1967; married, 1967, Patricia Elizabeth Tuckwell; had issue.
The Honourable Gerald Lascelles; married, 1952, Angela Dowding; had issue; divorced
1978; married Elizabeth Collingwood; had issue.
It was later reported that she did not want to marry Lord Lascelles, that her parents
forced her into an arranged marriage, and that Lascelles proposed to her after a wager
at his club.
Her brother the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, to whom she was very close, was
against the marriage because he did not want his sister to marry someone whom she did not
love.
Her elder son, the Earl of Harewood, however, writes about his parents' marriage in his
memoirs The Tongs and the Bones and challenges these widespread rumours that the marriage
was an unhappy one.
He says that "they got on well together and had a lot of friends and interests in common".
Family homes The Princess and her husband had homes in
London, Chesterfield House and in Yorkshire, first Goldsborough Hall, and later Harewood
House.
While at Goldsborough Hall, Princess Mary had internal alterations made by the architect
Sydney Kitson, to suit the upbringing of her two children and instigated the development
of formal planting of beech-hedge-lined long borders from the south terrace looking for
a quarter of a mile down an avenue of lime trees.
The limes were planted by her relatives as they visited the Hall throughout the 1920s,
including her father George V and her mother Queen Mary.
On 25 March 1923 her first son George was christened at St Mary's Church, which adjoins
Goldsborough Hall by Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of York.
The service was attended by King George V and Queen Mary.
After becoming the Countess of Harewood on the death of her father-in-law, Princess Mary
moved to Harewood House and took a keen interest in the interior decoration and renovation
of the Lascelles family's seat.
In farming pursuits, Princess Mary also became an expert in cattle breeding.
Princess Royal
On 6 October 1929, Lord Lascelles, who had been created a Knight of the Garter upon his
marriage, succeeded his father as 6th Earl of Harewood, Viscount Lascelles, and Baron
Harewood.
The couple's elder son assumed the courtesy title of Viscount Lascelles.
On 1 January 1932, George V declared that his only daughter should bear the title Princess
Royal, succeeding her aunt Princess Louise, the Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife who
had died a year before.
The Princess Royal was particularly close to her eldest brother, the Prince of Wales,
who subsequently became Edward VIII.
After the abdication crisis, she and her husband went to stay with the former Edward VIII,
by then created Duke of Windsor, at Enzenfeld Castle near Vienna.
Later, in November 1947, she allegedly declined to attend the wedding of her niece, The Princess
Elizabeth, to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten to protest the fact that the Duke of Windsor
had not been invited.
She gave ill health as the official reason for her non-attendance.
The Duke of Windsor was however invited to the weddings of Princess Margaret and Princess
Alexandra of Kent, his nieces, but out of bitterness he refused to attend.
At the outbreak of World War II, the Princess Royal became chief controller and later controller
commandant of the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
In that capacity she travelled Britain visiting its units, as well as wartime canteens and
other welfare organisations.
On the death of her younger brother, the Duke of Kent, she became the president of Papworth.
The Princess Royal became air chief commandant of Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing
Service in 1950 and received the honorary rank of general in the British Army in 1956.
Also, in 1949, the 10th Gurkha Rifles were renamed the 10th Princess Mary's Own Gurkha
Rifles in her honour.
After her husband's death in 1947, the Princess Royal lived at Harewood House with her elder
son and his family.
She became the chancellor of the University of Leeds in 1951, and continued to carry out
official duties at home and abroad.
She attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953 and later represented the
Queen at the independence celebrations of Trinidad and Tobago in 1962, and Zambia in
1964.
One of her last official engagements was to represent the Queen at the funeral of Queen
Louise in early March 1965.
The Princess Royal also made history that same month of March, 1965, when she visited
her brother, the Duke of Windsor at the London Clinic, where he was recovering from recent
eye surgery.
The Princess also met her brother's wife, the Duchess of Windsor, one of the Duchess'
few meetings with her husband's immediate family up to that time.
A few days later, the Queen also visited the Duke of Windsor, and she accepted the presence
of the Duchess, who curtsied to her — the first time that a member of the Royal Family
had officially received the Duke's wife.
On 28 March 1965 The Princess Royal suffered a fatal heart attack during a walk with her
elder son, Lord Harewood, and his children on the grounds of the Harewood House estate.
She was 67 years old.
She was buried at Harewood after a private family funeral at York Minster.
Six British monarchs reigned during Princess Mary's lifetime: Queen Victoria, Edward VII,
George V, Edward VIII and George VI and Elizabeth II.
Princess Mary is the great-aunt of heir apparent to the British throne - Prince Charles and
the great-great-aunt of the 2nd in line to the British throne - Prince William.
Titles, styles, honours and arms Titles and styles
25 April 1897 – 28 May 1898: Her Highness Princess Mary of York
28 May 1898 – 22 January 1901: Her Royal Highness Princess Mary of York
22 January 1901 – 9 November 1901: Her Royal Highness Princess Mary of Cornwall and York
9 November 1901 – 6 May 1910: Her Royal Highness Princess Mary of Wales
6 May 1910 – 22 February 1922: Her Royal Highness The Princess Mary
22 February 1922 – 6 October 1929: Her Royal Highness The Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles
6 October 1929 – 1 January 1932: Her Royal Highness The Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood
1 January 1932 – 28 March 1965: Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal
At the time of her death, Princess Mary's full style was: Her Royal Highness The Princess
Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood, Companion of the
Imperial Order of the Crown of India, Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order,
Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Dame Grand Cross of
the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Member of the Royal Red Cross.
Born a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Mary was styled Her Highness Princess Mary
of York from birth.
When Queen Victoria died, for a short time she was known as HRH Princess Mary of Cornwall
and York and then HRH Princess Mary of Wales when her father was created Prince of Wales.
Finally, upon her father's accession as King she was styled and titled HRH The Princess
Mary.
After her marriage, her Harewood titles were affixed after her royal titles.
When the title Princess Royal was conferred upon her in 1932, she became known as HRH
The Princess Royal.
Throughout her life and the various title changes, her signature was simply "Mary".
Honours British and Commonwealth Honours
CI: Companion of the Crown of India, 25 April 1919
GCStJ: Dame Grand Cross of St John of Jerusalem, 12 May 1926
GBE: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire, 3 June 1927
GCVO: Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, 11 May 1937
RRC: Member of the Royal Red Cross, 1953 CD: Canadian Forces Decoration
Royal Family Order of King George V Royal Family Order of King George VI
Royal Family Order of Queen Elizabeth II Foreign Honours
Dame of the Royal Order of Queen Maria Luisa Honorary military appointments
British 1918: Colonel-in-Chief, of The Royal Scots
1935: Colonel-in-Chief, of the Royal Signal Corps
1947: Colonel-in-Chief, of the West Yorkshire Regiment
1958: amalgamated, with the East Yorkshire Regiment, to form the Prince of Wales' Own
Yorkshire Regiment
1950: Air Chief Commandant of Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service
Commonwealth 1936–1950: Colonel-in-Chief, of the Indian
Corps of Signals 1937–1965: Colonel-in-Chief, of the Royal
Australian Corps of Signals 1930–1965: Colonel-in-Chief, of the Canadian
Scottish Regiment 1940–1965: Colonel-in-Chief, of the Royal
New Zealand Corps of Signals and several other Commonwealth regiments.
Arms In 1931, Princess Mary, Princess Royal and
Countess of Harewood was awarded her own personal arms, being the royal arms, differenced by
a label argent of three points, each bearing a cross gules
Ancestry Notes and sources