He was previously a captain in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and a civil servant to the Prime Minister.

His father was a major developer of part of Kensington and Chelsea and represented the Crown in Ireland.

Lord Chelsea was the second son of the 5th Earl Cadogan and his first wife, née Lady Beatrix Craven.

On 2 August 1878,[2] his older brother died at the age of twelve, so at the age of ten he became the heir to his father's peerage and acquired the courtesy title Viscount Chelsea (originally granted in 1800 in acknowledgment of the family's inheritance of the manor of Chelsea).

[4] On 30 April 1892, he married Mildred Cecilia Harriet Sturt (1867–1942),[2] a daughter of politician Lord Alington, at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, Chelsea[2] and they had six children: His own death from cancer at age 40 at Temple House, Theobalds Park, Hertfordshire, preceded the death of his only son in childhood illness.