Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon

Who was Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon?

Major Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon PC GCSI GCMG GCIE GBE was a British Liberal politician and administrator who served as Governor General of Canada, the 13th since Canadian Confederation, and as Viceroy and Governor-General of India, the country's 22nd.

Freeman-Thomas was born in England and educated at Eton College and then the University of Cambridge before serving for 15 years in the Sussex Artillery. He then entered the diplomatic and political fields, acting as aide-de-camp to his father-in-law when the latter was Governor of Victoria, and in 1900 was elected to the British House of Commons. He thereafter occupied a variety of government posts, including secretary to the British prime minister and, after being raised to the peerage as Lord Willingdon, as Lord-in-Waiting to King George V. From 1913 on, Willingdon held gubernatorial and viceregal offices throughout the British Empire, starting with the governorship of Bombay and then the governorship of Madras, before he was in 1926 appointed as Canadian governor general by the King, on the recommendation of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Stanley Baldwin, to replace the Viscount Byng of Vimy as viceroy, and he occupied the post until succeeded by the Earl of Bessborough in 1931. Willingdon was immediately thereafter appointed as Governor General and Viceroy of India by the King, on the advice of British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, to replace the Lord Irwin, and he served in the post until succeeded by the Marquess of Linlithgow in 1936.