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JOHN PATRICK
THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T.
( 1 847-1 900)
I dill, third ^ Maixjucss cf^JiU:c,u^ith /us mcllicr
uct g
Pro-nv a, bicbutf cU. ^Uriuvt vjtua-rt
fSr-^^^CTlJcdkcr bh^c.
JOHN PATRICK
THIRD MARQUESS OF
BUTE, K.T.
(1847- 1 900)
A MEMOIR
BY
THE RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER BLAIR
BT., O.S.B.
AUTHOR or " A MEDLEY OF MEMORIES," KTC.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921
*4 «*
All rights reserved
TO THE MEMORY
OF MY FRIEND
47D-iblJ
PREFACE
Just twenty years have passed away since the death,
at the age of Httle more than fifty, of the subject ot
this memoir — a period of time not indeed inconsider-
able, yet not so long as to render unreasonable the
hope that others besides the members of his family
(who have long desired that there should be some
printed record of his life), and the sadly diminished
numbers of his intimate friends, may be interested in
learning something of the personality and the career
of a man who may justly be regarded as one of the
not least remarkable, if one of the least known,
figures of the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Disraeli, when he published fifty years ago his
most popular romance, thought fit to place on the
title-page a motto from old Terence: " Nosse omnia
haec salus est adulescentulis."^ Was he really of
opinion — it is difficult to credit it — that the welfare
of the youth of his generation depended on their
familiarising themselves with the wholly imaginary
life-story of " Loth air " ? the romantic, sentimental,
and somewhat invertebrate youth who owed such
^ " It is for the profit of young men to have known all these things."
Terence, Entiuchus, v. 4, 18.
vii
viii PREFACE
fame as he achieved to the fact that he was popu-
larly supposed to be modelled on the young Lord
Bute — though never, in truth, did any hero of fiction
bear less resemblance to his fancied prototype.
The present biographer ventures to think that
the motto of Lothair might with greater propriety
figure on the title-page of this volume. For there
is at least one feature in the life of John third
Marquess of Bute which teaches a salutary lesson and
points an undoubted moral to a pleasure-loving
generation, such a lesson and moral as it would be
vain to look for in the puppet of Disraeli's Oriental
fancy. If there is any characteristic which stands
out in that life more saliently than another, it is surely
the strong and compelling sense of duty — a sense,
it is to be noticed, acquired rather than congenital,
for Bute was by nature and constitution, as an acute
observer early remarked,^ inclined to indolence —
which runs all through it like a silver thread. Other
traits, and marked ones, he no doubt possessed —
among them a penetrating sense of religion, a curious
tenderness of heart, a singular tenacity of purpose,
and a deep veneration for all that is good and beau-
tiful in the natural and supernatural world ; but these
were for the most part below the surface, though the
pages of this record are not without evidence of them
all. But in the whole external conduct of his life
it may be said that the desire of doing his duty was
paramount with him — his duty to God and to man;
his duty, above all, to the innumerable human beings
* Mgr. Cape). Post^ p. 75. See also p. ni.
PREFACE ix
whose happiness and welfare his great position and
manifold responsibilities rendered to some extent
dependent on him ; and, finally, his duty in such public
offices as he was called on to fill, and from which
his diffidence of character and aversion from anything
like personal display would have naturally inclined
him to shrink. If the writer has succeeded in
presenting in these pages something of this aspect
of the life and character of his departed friend with
anything like the vividness with which, at the end
of twenty years, they still remain impressed on his
own memory, he will be well content.
" The true life of a man," wrote John Henry
Newman nearly sixty years ago,^ " is in his letters " ;
and no apology is needed for the inclusion in this
volume of some, at least, of the large number of Lord
Bute's letters which have been placed at the disposal
of his biographer, and for the use of which he takes
this opportunity of thanking the several owners.
Bute possessed in a high degree the essential qualities
of a good letter-writer — a remarkable command of
language, the power of clear and forcible expression,
and (not least) a salutary sense of humour ; and his
voluminous correspondence, especially in connection
with his literary work, was always and thoroughly
characteristic of himself.
' " It has ever been a hobby of mine, though perhaps it is a truism,
not a hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters. . . . Not only
for the interest of a biography, but for the arriving at the insides of things,
the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they
conjecture feelings, they assign motives, they interpret Lord Burleigh's
nods ; but contemporary letters are facts." {Newman to his sister y Mrs.
John Mosley, May iS, 1863.)
X PREFACE
The writer desires, in conclusion, to express his
gratitude not only for the loan of Lord Bute's letters,
but for the kind help he has received from many
quarters in the elucidation (especially) of details
regarding his childhood and youth. In this connec-
tion his thanks are particularly due to the late Earl
of Galloway and his sisters for their interesting
reminiscences of Bute's boyhood at Galloway House ;
and also to the family of the late Mr. Charles Scott
Murray for some particulars of his life during the
critical years of his early manhood.
+ DAVID OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR, O.S.B.
Christmas, 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Early Life. (1847-1861) i
II. Harrow and Christ Church. (1862-1866) . . 18
III. Religious Inquiries — Reception Postponed— Com-
ing OF Age. (1867, 1868) 39
IV. Danesfield— Reception into Catholic Church.
(1867-1869) 60
V. The Western Mail — Rome and the Council-
Return TO Scotland, (i 869-1 871) ... 83
VI. Marriage — Home and Family Life — Visit to
Majorca. (187 1-1874) 102
VII. Literary Work— The Scottish Review. (1875-1886) 117
VIII. Literary Work — cotdinued. (1886, 1887) . . .137
IX. Foreign Travel — St. John's Lodge — Mayor of
Cardiff, (i 888-1 891) 156
X. Freedom of Glasgow — Welsh Benefactions — St.
Andrews. (1891-1894) 179
XI. Notes and Anecdotes — St. Andrews (2) — Provost
of Rothesay. (1894-1897) 198
XII. Architectural Work— Psychical Research — Con-
clusion. (1898-1900) 215
APPENDICES
I. Prize Poem (Harrow School) 231
II. Hymn on St. Magnus 236
III. Hymn: "Our Lady of the Snows" .... 238
IV. A Provost's Prayer 240
V. Recollections. By Sir R. Rowand Anderson , 241
VI. Obituary. By F. W. H. Myers ..... 245
VII. Bibliography 247
INDEX 249
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
John, Third Marquess of Bute at 9, with his Mother
Frontispiece
From a Painting at Momttstua7-t. Photo by F. C. liiglis, Edinburgh.
FACINf; PAGE
The Marquess of Bute, ^et 2 6
From a Pencil Drazuins; hy Ross at Cardiff Castle. This Drawing, executed for
Lord Bute's great-grand-aioit {then aged g2), daughter of the third Earl, George
Ill's Prime Minister, zvas left by her to her niece, Lady Ann Da^vson, tuliose great-
niece, Mrs. Clark of Titl-y-Garn, gave it in 1906 to Augusta, zuije of John, fourth
Marquess of Bute.
The Marquess of Bute, /ET 17 28
The Communion of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland . 48
Cardiff Castle . 56
Castell Coch, Glamorgan 118
The Great Hall, Mountstuart 134
Photo by Sweet, Rothesay.
Falkland Palace 152
Photo by Valentine, Dtmdee.
Facsimile Letter from the Marquess of Bute to Miss
Skene 174
The Marquess of Bute as Mayor of Cardiff . . .176
The Marquess of Bute as Lord Rector of St. Andrews
University. (1892-1897) 202
Photo by Rodger, St. Andrews.
Pluscarden Priory 216
xiii B
In order to facilitate other Subseribers getting
this Book without undue delay, it is respeetfully
requested that it may be returned to the Library as
soon as read.
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
I 847-1861
John Patrick, third Marquess of Bute, Earl of
Windsor, Mount] oy and Dumfries, holder of nine
other titles in the peerages of Great Britain and of
Scotland, and a baronet of Nova Scotia, was fifteenth
in descent from Robert II., King of Scotland, who,
towards the end of the fourteenth century, created
his son John Stuart, or Steuart, hereditary sheriff
of the newly-erected county of Bute, Arran and
Cumbrae, making to him at the same time a grant
of land in those islands. His lineal descendant, the
sixth sheriff of Bute, who adhered faithfully to the
monarchy in the Civil Wars, and suffered consider-
ably in the royal cause, was created a baronet in
1627 ' ^rid his grandson, a stalwart opponent of the
union of Scotland with England, was raised to the
peerage of Scotland as Earl of Bute, with several
subsidiary titles, in 1702. Lord Bute's grandson,
the third earl, was the well-known Tory minister
and favourite of the young king, George III., and his
mother — a faithful servant of his sovereign, a man
of culture and refinement, admirable as husband,
father, and friend, and withal, by the irony of fate,
unquestionably the most unpopular prime minister
JOHN PATRICK
THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T.
(1847-I9OO)
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
I 847-1861
John Patrick, third Marquess of Bute, Earl of
Windsor, Mount joy and Dumfries, holder of nine
other titles in the peerages of Great Britain and of
Scotland, and a baronet of Nova Scotia, was fifteenth
in descent from Robert II., King of Scotland, who,
towards the end of the fourteenth century, created
his son John Stuart, or Steuart, hereditary sheriff
of the newly-erected county of Bute, Arran and
Cumbrae, making to him at the same time a grant
of land in those islands. His lineal descendant, the
sixth sheriff of Bute, who adhered faithfully to the
monarchy in the Civil Wars, and suffered consider-
ably in the royal cause, was created a baronet in
1627 ; and his grandson, a stalwart opponent of the
union of Scotland with England, was raised to the
peerage of Scotland as Earl of Bute, with several
subsidiary titles, in 1702. Lord Bute's grandson,
the third earl, was the well-known Tory minister
and favourite of the young king, George III., and his
mother — a faithful servant of his sovereign, a man
of culture and refinement, admirable as husband,
father, and friend, and withal, by the irony of fate,
unquestionably the most unpopular prime minister
2 EARLY LIFE
who ever held office in England. His heir and
successor made a great match, marrying in 1766 the
eldest daughter and co-heiress of the second and last
Viscount Windsor ; and thirty years later he was
created Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, and
Viscount Mountjoy. Lord Mountstuart, his heir,
who predeceased his father, married Penelope, only
surviving child and heiress of the fifth Earl of
Dumfries and Stair ; and the former of those titles
devolved on his son, together with valuable estates
in Ayrshire. The second marquess, who succeeded
to the family honours the year before Waterloo,
when he was just of age (he had already travelled
extensively, and had paid a visit to Napoleon at
Elba), earned the reputation of being one of the
most enlightened and public-spirited noblemen of
his generation. During the thirty-four years that
he owned and controlled the vast family estates in
Wales and Scotland, he devoted his whole energies
to their improvement, and to promoting the welfare
of his tenantry and dependents. His practical
interest in agriculture was evinced by the fact that
the arable land on his Buteshire property was
trebled during his tenure of it ; and foreseeing with
remarkable prescience the great future in store for
the port and docks of Cardiff, he spared neither
labour nor means in their development. He was
Lord-Lieutenant both of Glamorgan and of Bute,
and discharged with tact and success the office of
Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland
in 1842, on the eve of the ecclesiastical crisis which
ended in the secession of more than 400 ministers
of the Establishment. His political opinions were
in the best sense liberal, and he was a consistent
advocate of Catholic Emancipation, even when that
1847] BIRTH AT MOUNTSTUART 3
measure was opposed by the Duke of Wellington,
whom he generally supported. A few hours before
Ills death, which occurred at Cardiff Castle with
startling suddenness in March, 1848, he had expressed
the confident hope that his successor, if not he him-
self, would live to see Cardiff rival Liverpool as a
great commercial seaport.
Lord Bute was twice married — first to Lady
Maria North, of the Guilford family, by whom he
had no issue ; and secondly, three years before his
death, to Lady Sophia Hastings, second daughter
of the first Marquess of Hastings. By this lady,
who survived him eleven years, he had one child,
John Patrick, the subject of this memoir, who was
born on September 12, 1847, at Mountstuart House,
the older mansion of that name in the Isle of Bute,
which was burnt down in 1877 and replaced by the
great Gothic pile designed by Sir Robert Rowand
Anderson. Old Mountstuart was an unpretending
eighteenth-century house, built by James, second
Earl of Bute (1690-1723), a few years before his
early death. It was the favourite residence of his
son the third earl, George III.'s prime minister,
who is commemorated by an obelisk in the grounds
not far from the house. The wings at the two
extremities escaped the fire, and are incorporated
in the modern mansion.
Here, then, on the fair green island which had
been the home of his race for nearly five centuries,
opened the life of this child of many hopes, who
within a year was by a cruel stroke of fate to be
deprived of the guardianship and guidance of his
amiable and excellent father. The second marquess
died, as has been said, deeply regretted, in the spring
following the birth of his heir ; and the manifold
4 EARLY LIFE
honours and possessions of the family devolved upon
a baby six months old. Up to his thirteenth year
the fatherless boy was under the constant and
unremitting care of a devoted mother, whose
memory he cherished with veneration to the end of
his life. Sophia Lady Bute was a woman of warm
heart and deep personal piety, tinged, however,
with an uncompromising Protestantism commoner
in that day than in ours. One of her fondest hopes
or dreams was the conversion to her own faith of
the numerous Irish Catholics whom the development
of the port of Cardiff, and the rapid growth of the
mining industry, had attracted to South Wales ;
and the venerable Benedictine bishop who had at
that time the spiritual charge of the district, and
for whom Lord Bute had a sincere regard and
respect, used to tell of the band of " colporteurs "
(peripatetic purveyors of bibles and polemical
tracts) whom the marchioness engaged to hawk their
wares about the mining villages of Glamorgan.
Lord Bute's upbringing as a child was, by the
force of circumstances, under entirely feminine
influences and surroundings ; and to this fact was
probably to some extent due the strain of shyness
and sensitive diffidence which were among his life-
long characteristics. He seems to have been in-
clined sometimes to resent, even in his early boy-
hood, the strictness of the surveillance under which
he lived. His mother once took him from Dumfries
House to call at Blairquhan Castle, driving thither
in a carriage and four, as her custom was. While
the ladies were conversing in the drawing-room, a
young married daughter of the house took the
little boy out to see the gardens, ending with a call
at the head gamekeeper's. A day or two afterwards
1859] DEATH OF LADY BUTE 5
the chatelaine of Blairquhan received a letter from
Lady Bute, expressing her dismay, indignation, and
distress at learning that her precious boy had actually
been taken to the kennels, and exposed to the risk
of contact with half a dozen pointers and setters.
When reminded many years later of this incident
(which he had quite forgotten). Lord Bute said, in
his quiet way : " Yes, I was kept wrapped in cotton
wool in those days, and I did not always like it.
The dogs would not have hurt me, and I am sure
that I made friends with them."
Lady Bute died in 1859, leaving behind her,
both in Scotland and in Wales, the memory of many
deeds of kindness and benevolence. Her husband
had made no provision whatever in his will for the
guardianship of his only son, who had been consti-
tuted a ward in Chancery two months after his
father's death, his mother being nominated by the
Lord Chancellor his sole guardian. Lady Bute's
will recommended the appointment as her son's
guardian of Colonel (afterwards Major-General)
Charles Stuart, Sir Francis Hastings Gilbert, and
Lady Elizabeth Moore, who was distantly related to
the Bute family through the Hastings', and had
been one of Lady Bute's dearest friends. Sir
Francis Gilbert being at this time absent from
England in the consular service, the Court of
Chancery appointed as guardians the two other
persons named by Lady Bute.
It seems unnecessary to describe in detail the
prolonged friction and regrettable litigation which
were the result of this dual guardianship of the
orphaned boy ; yet they must be here referred to,
for it is beyond question that they were not only
detrimental to his happiness and welfare during his
6 EARLY LIFE
early boyhood, but could not fail seriously to affect
the development of his character in later years.
The child was deeply attached to Lady Elizabeth
Moore, who had assumed the entire charge of him
after his mother's death ; and his letters written
at this period give evidence not only of this attach-
ment, but of his very strong reluctance to leave her
for the care of General Stuart, who insisted that it
was time that a boy of nearly thirteen should be
removed from the exclusively female custody in
which he had been kept from babyhood. Lady
Elizabeth, yielding partly to her own feelings, and
partly to the earnest and repeated solicitations of
her young ward, was ill-advised enough, instead
of committing him as desired to the care of her
co-guardian, to carry him off surreptitiously to
Scotland, and to keep him concealed for some time
in an obscure hotel in the suburbs of Edinburgh.
Here is the boy's own account of the affair, written
from this hotel to a relation in India ^ (he was
between twelve and thirteen years of age) : —
I prayed, I entreated, I agonised, I abused the
general ; I adjured her not to give me up to him.
She was shaken but not convinced. So we went to
Newcastle, to York, and to London, where I got a bad
cold, my two teeth were pulled, etc., etc. We were
delayed some time there, and meanwhile my prayers
and adjurations were trebled : Lady E. was con-
vinced, and promised not to let me go. She got one
of the solicitors to the Bank of England in the City
to write a letter to Genl. S. for her, as civil as
possible, but declining to give me up ; to which the
general returned a furious answer, conveying his
determination to appeal to the Vice-Chancellor about
^ Charles MacLean, to whom he referred more than thirty years
later, in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews (p. i88).
^hc^'UutfiLess of zOu.tc
a-et 2
~from, a. d^oywuza bu, yi^xJOtoss at C'^arc/ify (du^'^iIc
C.; j/: V;'.;*:' J.''\-
1859] RIVAL GUARDIANS 7
the matter. After a month we became convinced
that the Vice-Chancellor would decide against us ;
and on the night of April i6th Lady E. left the hotel
secretly, and with her maid and me shot the moon
to Edinburgh, where we arrived at 7 next morning.^
For a boy of twelve this is a sufficiently remarkable
letter ; but an even more precocious document is
a draft letter dated a fortnight before the flight to
Edinburgh, and composed entirely by young Bute,
who recommended Lady Elizabeth to copy it and
send it to her co-guardian as from herself !
Dear General Stuart,
You will, I am afraid, be much surprised
upon the reception of this letter, but I trust that
your love for Bute will make you accede to the
request which I am about to make. B. has lately
had much sorrow, and he has formed an attachment
to me only to have it broken by separation, and in
order to go among entire strangers to him — for in
that light, I am sorry to say, I must regard you and
Mrs. Stuart. With your consent, then, dear Genl.
Stuart, I shall be happy to keep him with me until
he is 14, when he will of course choose for himself.
We could live with good Mr. Stacey very nicely at
Dumfries House or Mountstuart, and I could
occasionally bring him to England — or indeed you
could come to see him at Mountstuart. I trust,
dear Gen. Stuart, you will be the more inclined to
accede to my request when I tell you that he has
I During Bute's travels with Lady Elizabeth Moore, in the course
of her efforts to retain the custody of her little ward, his most trusted
retainer was one Jack Wilson. The pertinacity with which the child
was pursued, and the extent of Wilson's devotion, are attested by
the known fact that on one occasion he knocked a writ-server down
the stairs of a Rothesay hotel where Bute was staying with Lady
Elizabeth. Wilson was accustomed always to sleep outside his young
master's door. He rose later to be head-keeper at Mountstuart, and
died there on May 23, 191 2.
8 EARLY LIFE
expressed to me the greatest reluctance at parting
from me and going to you — a repugnance which I
can only regard as very natural, for I was much
grieved to see that you did not follow my advice in
walking with him and consulting him (and believe
me without so doing 3^ou will never gain his affec-
tions), while I have always done so, as was his poor
mother's invariable custom.^
It does not appear whether this letter, which is
dated from 23 Dover Street, and is entirely in the
boy's own handwriting, exactly as given above,
was actually sent b}^ Lady Elizabeth, In any case
General Stuart was not the man to submit to the
compulsory separation from his ward which resulted
from what the House of Lords afterwards charac-
terised as the " clandestine, furtive, and fraudulent
action " of Lady Elizabeth Moore. He at once
laid the case before the Court of Chancery, which
directed that the boy was to be immediately handed
over to his care, and sent without delay to an
approved private school, and in due time to Eton
or Harrow, and then to one of the English universi-
ties. Lady EUzabeth absolutely refused to comply
with the order of the Court, and was consequently
removed in July, i860, from the office of guar-
dian. Meanwhile the case was complicated by the
intervention of the Scottish tutor-at-law, Colonel
* It seems right to mention that Bute had another reason,
apart from his attachment to Lady Ehzabeth Moore, for his appar-
ently unreasonable hostility to his other guardian. One of his
strongest feelings at this time was his almost passionate devotion
to the memory of his mother ; and he never forgot what he called
General Stuart's " gross disrespect " in not accompanying her
remains from Edinburgh, where she died, to Bute, where she was
buried. " He left her body," wrote Bute to an intimate friend from
Christ Church, Oxford, " to be attended on that long and troublesome
journey, in the depth of winter, only by women, servants, and myself,
a child of twelve."
i86i] LORDS' DECISION 9
James Crichton Stuart, who had been since the death
of Lord Bute's father manager and administrator
of the family estates in Scotland. Colonel Stuart
obtained from the Scottish Courts an order that the
boy should be sent to Loretto, a well-known school
near Edinburgh, and that the Earl of Galloway
should be the *' custodier " of his person. The
Court of Chancery promptly issued an injunction
forbidding the tutor-at-law to interfere in any way
with the boy's education, whereupon both Colonel
Stuart and the English guardian appealed to the
House of Lords. That tribunal gave its judgment
on May 17, 1861, censuring the Court of Session for
its delay . in dealing with this important matter,
confirming General Stuart as sole guardian, and
sanctioning his scheme for the boy's education.
The House of Lords, in giving the decision which