Colonel Sir Thomas Myddelton Biddulph

A carte-de-visite portrait of Colonel Thomas Myddelton Biddulph (1809-1878), from 1851 to 1866 the Master of the Queen's Household.

Born in 1809, he was the second son of Robert Biddulph of Ledbury and his wife, Charlotte, daughter and eventual heiress of Richard Myddelton. In 1826 he entered the 1st Life Guards. In 1851 he went on half-pay as a Lieutenant-Colonel; he was promoted to the rank of General in 1878.

He married on 16 February 1857 Mary Frederica Seymour (1824–1902), one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, and later an honorary Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen. The marriage produced one and one daughter.

At the time of his death in 1878, Colonel Sir Thomas Myddelton Biddulph was Keeper of the Privy Purse. He had previously given service as the Master of the Queen's Household, the Master of the Horse and an Extra Equerry to the Queen. He died on 28 September 1878 at Abergeldie Mains, near Balmoral. During his final illness, the Queen visited him daily. He was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's Church, Clewer, near Windsor in Berkshire. According to his obituary in the Illustrated London News (5 October 1878): 'The event [his death] has caused the Queen the profoundest grief. Sir Thomas had been for twenty-seven years one of Her Majesty's most valuable and confidential servants.'

Photographed on 21 February 1861 by Camille Silvy of London.

From the album of Elizabeth Van de Weyer, wife of Jean Sylvain Van de Weyer, Belgian ambassador to the Court of St. James. The family lived at New Lodge in Berkshire.