Arthur was born at Buckingham Palace on 1 May 1850, the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

In Canada, Arthur, as an officer with the Montreal detachment of the Rifle Brigade,[3] undertook a year's training and engaged in defending the Dominion from the Fenian Raids; there was initially concern that his personal involvement in Canada's defence might put the Prince in danger from Fenians and their supporters in the United States, but it was decided his military duty came first.

[3] Following his arrival at Halifax, Arthur toured the country for eight weeks and made a visit in January 1870 to Washington, D.C., where he met with President Ulysses S.

[19] In August 1899 the 6th Battalion, Rifles of the Canadian Non-Permanent Active Militia, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, also asked Prince Arthur to give his name to the regiment and act as its honorary colonel.

For a brief period of time, after the May Coup that took place in Serbia in 1903, he was among those considered for the vacant Serbian throne after the extinction of the then ruling Obrenović dynasty.

His succession was advocated particularly among the conservative anglophile circles, represented most prominently by Čedomilj Mijatović, then Serbian ambassador to the Court of St James's.

[22] On his mother's birthday (24 May) in 1874, Arthur was created a royal peer, being titled as the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of Sussex.

Through his children's marriages, Arthur became the father-in-law of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden; Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife; and Sir Alexander Ramsay.

[n 1] For many years, Arthur maintained a liaison with Leonie, Lady Leslie, sister of Jennie Churchill, while still remaining devoted to his wife.

[27] In 1910, Arthur travelled aboard the Union-Castle Line ship Balmoral Castle to South Africa, to open the first parliament of the newly formed Union of South Africa,[28] and in Johannesburg on 30 November he laid a commemorative stone at the Rand Regiments Memorial, dedicated to the British soldiers that died during the Second Boer War.

The Governor General and his viceregal family travelled throughout the country, performing such constitutional and ceremonial tasks as opening parliament in 1911 (for which Arthur wore his field marshal's uniform and the Duchess of Connaught wore the gown she had worn at the King's coronation earlier that year) and,[31] in 1917, laying at the newly rebuilt Centre Block on Parliament Hill the same cornerstone his older brother, the late King Edward VII, had set on 1 September 1860, when the original building was under construction.

The family crossed the country a number of times and the Governor General made another trip to the United States in 1912, when he met with President William Howard Taft.

[32] When in Ottawa, Connaught maintained a routine of four days each week at his office on Parliament Hill and held small, private receptions for members of all political parties and dignitaries.

Arthur maintained a wider role in the empire— for instance, from 1912 until his death, serving as Colonel-in-Chief of the Cape Town Highlanders Regiment[34]— but the Connaughts remained in Canada after the beginning of the global conflict, Arthur emphasising the need for military training and readiness for Canadian troops departing for war, and giving his name to the Connaught Cup for the Royal North-West Mounted Police, to encourage pistol marksmanship for recruits.

Though well intended, upon the outbreak of the war, Arthur immediately donned his field marshal's uniform and went, without advice or guidance from his ministers, to training grounds and barracks to address the troops and to see them off before their voyage to Europe.

Following the war, Arthur commissioned in memory of Canada's fallen a stained glass window which is located in St. Bartholomew's Church, Ottawa, which the family attended regularly.

[37] The following year he travelled to India, where he officially opened the new Central Legislative Assembly, Council of State, and Chamber of Princes.

The Duchess, who had been ill during their years at Rideau Hall, had died in March 1917, and Arthur mostly withdrew from public life in 1928; his last formal engagement was the opening of the Connaught Gardens in Sidmouth, Devon, on 3 November 1934.

His great-nephew King Edward VIII remembered Prince Arthur in his memoirs:"His manners were faultless; his courtesy invested his simplest action with dignity and naturalness.

Even when I sometimes found myself in rebellion against some of the things of the world of which he was a part, I nevertheless felt that, while he might not necessarily approve the course I had in mind, he would view it in a sympathetic and understanding light.

He was an active member of the military, eventually reaching the rank of Field Marshal, and served as personal aide-de-camp to four successive sovereigns.