Ward, Maxwell Richard Crosbie (1868–1950), 6th Viscount Bangor , politician, was born 4 May 1868, third son of Henry William Crosbie (1828–1911), 5th Viscount Bangor, representative peer, JP and DL for Co. Down, and his first wife, Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. Henry King of Ballylin, King's Co. (Offaly). Educated at Harrow School and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he was gazetted to the Royal Artillery in 1887 and served as a captain of the legation guard in Peking. He succeeded his father as 6th Viscount Bangor in 1911 and retired from the army the following year with the rank of major. From 1913 to 1914 he commanded a militia unit, the Antrim Royal Garrison Artillery, but on the outbreak of the first world war he rejoined the army, serving in France and on the staff of the Royal Naval Division during the Dardanelles campaign. He was mentioned three times in dispatches and at the end of the war he was awarded the OBE.
A representative peer for Ireland since March 1913, he took his seat in the house of lords in February 1920. He was an active member of the Ulster Unionist party and opposed the proposed exclusion of three Ulster counties during the negotiations on partition. In May 1920 he was among a hundred members of UUC who requested an emergency meeting to discuss this issue. Appointed to the Northern Ireland senate on its creation in 1921, he became parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, Viscount Craigavon (qv), in 1929. The appointment carried with it the positions of deputy leader of the house and whip of the unionist party in the upper chamber. As a member of the senate he spoke frequently on transport, unemployment, and farming, and in October 1930 he was unanimously selected as speaker of the house (serving until 1950) to fill the vacancy caused when the 3rd marquess of Dufferin was killed in an air crash in England. He was also active in local politics and became chairman of the Co. Down regional education committee after the passing of the education act in 1923. A former DL for Co. Down, he was appointed to the NI privy council in 1931.
Prominently associated with many charities, he became the first honorary governor of Downshire hospital, Downpatrick. He was also president of the NI area of the British Legion and honorary president of the Belfast battalion of the Boys’ Brigade. A member of the exclusive Royal Yacht Squadron (Cowes), he became vice-commodore of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in April 1934 after the death of Col. R. G. Sharman-Crawford. He was also involved in the Church of Ireland at every level from local vestry, through the diocesan council, to the representative church body in Dublin. Lord Bangor died on 17 November 1950 at his home, Castle Ward, after a brief illness. In accordance with his wishes, his remains were borne on an ordinary farm cart to a jetty on the shore of Castle Ward Bay and from there to a point off Walter Rock, where they were committed to Strangford Lough.
He married (5 January 1905) Agnes Elizabeth, third daughter of the late Dacre Mervyn Archdale Hamilton of Cornacassa, Co. Monaghan; they had one son, Edward Henry Harold, and three daughters, Mary Helen Kathleen, Helen Elizabeth, and Margaret Bertha. His son, who succeeded to the title, worked as Reuter's correspondent in the Far East and as a BBC correspondent in Finland, the Middle East, and Greece in the 1930s. He became well known during the second world war as a BBC war correspondent, and in 1941 he and several other journalists were captured by the Italians in Libya and held for three years in a prisoner-of-war camp.