Du Pre Alexander , 2nd Earl of Caledon Du Pré Alexander , 2nd Earl of Caledon KP ( 14 December 1777 – 8 April 1839 ) , styled The Honourable Du Pré Alexander from 1790 to 1800 and Viscount Alexander from 1800 to 1802 , was an Irish peer , landlord and colonial administrator , and was the second child and only son of James Alexander , 1st Earl of Caledon . Education and inheritance . He was educated from 1790 to 1796 at Eton College in England and later at Christ Church , Oxford . He was elected Member of Parliament for Newtownards in 1800 and sat in the Irish House of Commons until the Act of Union in 1801 . In the latter year , he was appointed High Sheriff of Armagh . He succeeded to the title of Earl of Caledon on the death of his father in 1802 and was elected a Representative Peer for Ireland in 1804 . Governorship . In July 1806 he was appointed Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in what is now South Africa . He was the first governor on the Cape ' s cession to United Kingdom ; the Caledon River and the district Caledon , Western Cape there are named after him . Lord Caledon was not , literally , the first British civil governor of the Cape , having been preceded in that capacity by Lord Macartney and Sir George Yonge , successive holders of the office between the first conquest of the Cape , and its cession back to the Dutch under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802 . Rather , Lord Caledon was the first civil governor after the Cape ' s reconquest from the Dutch by General Sir David Baird in 1806 . The question of the relationship between the civil and the military authorities of the colony , personified in Lord Caledon ' s relationship with the Commander - in - Chief , General Sir Henry Grey , was the most troublesome of the former ' s period of office as Governor , and the issue on which he resigned in June 1811 . Less than three years after his departure , in March 1814 , an open letter was written defending his record as Governor . The writer , Colonel Christopher Bird , Deputy Colonial Secretary at the Cape ( subsequently Colonial Secretary ) , was well qualified to speak , although his partisanship on Lord Caledon ' s behalf is unconcealed . In another part of the Caledon Papers , Lord Caledon ' s own appraisal of his Governorship of the Cape is to be found . It occurs in the course of a letter which he wrote to the Prime Minister , the 2nd Earl of Liverpool , in 1818 stating his claims to be given a peerage of the United Kingdom : ' . . . The administration of the colonial government during my residence there for a term of four years , was more than usually arduous , in consequence of my being the first civil governor after the capture of the settlement , and from there being no records of a former British government in any of the public offices at The Cape . . . . I hope I shall be excused for stating that , upon my own responsibility and under the most embarrassing circumstances , occasioned by the loss of four British frigates which were to have protected the convoy , I detached 2 , 000 infantry to co - operate with the force from India in the reduction of the Mauritius . In a letter from Lord Minto [ Governor General of India ] upon that occasion , he acknowledges the public service I rendered , not only as relating to the fall of the Mauritius , but adds that it was to the co - operation I afforded he was indebted for the means of moving against Java . . . . ' . " Rotten borough " . Other political correspondence in the Caledon Papers , in this case during the Governorship years , relates to Lord Caledon ' s relations with the government at home and , in particular , to the parliamentary conduct of the two members , Josias Du Pré Porcher and Nicholas Vansittart , whom he returned for the notoriously rotten borough of Old Sarum , Wiltshire . He had bought this borough and estate in 1802 , for c . £43 , 000 , with a view to increasing his claims to some form of suitable official employment . Though he consistently denied that his appointment to the Cape had been a ' political ' one , it was undeniable that the seats for Old Sarum had been an added recommendation . Doubt therefore arose as to whether he owed a political loyalty to the home government for the time being , or to the Grenville administration which had appointed him and which had fallen from power soon afterwards , in March 1807 . There is correspondence on this subject with Lord Grenville himself , Porcher and Vansittart ; also with Lord Castlereagh , who held office in the government which succeeded Grenville ' s . The Caledon Cape Papers illuminate this shadowy area between political and public service . Marriage and Tyttenhanger . Lord Caledon married Lady Catherine Yorke , daughter of Philip Yorke , 3rd Earl of Hardwicke and Lady Elizabeth Lindsay , on 16 October 1811 in St . James ' Church , Westminster , and had issue : With this marriage the Caledon family effectively inherited Tyttenhanger House near St Albans , Hertfordshire , which had belonged to the 3rd Earl of Hardwicke ' s grandmother , Katherine Freeman , the sister and heiress of Sir Henry Pope Blount , 3rd and last Baronet . Sir Henry died in 1757 without issue , leaving his sister Katherine , the wife of Rev . William Freeman , his heir . She left an only daughter , Catherine , who married Charles Yorke , second son of Philip Yorke , 1st Earl of Hardwicke , whose son Philip , 3rd Earl of Hardwicke , on his death in 1834 , left four daughters , to the second of whom , Catherine , the wife of the 2nd Earl of Caledon , came the manor of Tyttenhanger . Lord Caledon was invested as a Knight of St Patrick on 20 August 1821 and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of County Tyrone in 1831 . He died on 8 April 1839 at Caledon , aged 61 , much mourned by his tenants in the model town of Caledon , which he had rebuilt and enlarged so sympathetically . A loyal address from the tenantry issued a few years earlier alludes to his ' acts of liberality , munificence and kindness ' and there is plenty of evidence to confirm that this was no mere empty elegy . ' Lord Caledon ' , wrote Inglis in his book " Ireland " ( 1834 ) , ' is all that could be desire – a really good resident country gentleman ' . Lady Caledon died on 8 July 1863 , having bequeathed Tyttenhanger to her daughter - in - law Jane , with an entail upon her four children and , according to one source , the estate descended to her eldest son James Alexander , 4th Earl of Caledon , who died in 1898 . His widow became lady of the manor and held it in trust for her children . Other sources indicate that Tyttenhanger was the home of Lady Jane Van Koughnet , the daughter of the 4th Earl of Caledon , and her husband , Commander E . B . Van Koughnet , until her death in 1941 . The house was sold in 1973 .