THE SCOTTS OF BUCCLEUCH. --(CONCLUDED.)
T" little Countess Mary being the greatest heiress in Scotland, was coveted as a bride by most of the noble families of that coun- try. The clan of Scott especially vied with each other in their preten- sions to her hand and estates. But the Countess of Wemyss, her mo- ther, seems to have had no difficulty in making up her mind as to the most desirable match, and to avoid any chance of the young lady being run away with by one of the " broken men " of the Borders, married her at the early age of eleven, on the 9th of February, 1659, to young Walter Scott, eldest son of Sir Gilbert Scott of Highchester, of the House of Harden, who was only four- teen. The marriage was performed at Wemyas, by the minister of that place, without proclamation, by virtue of an order from the Presbytery of Kirkcaldy, and few or none of her friends were made acquainted with the matter till the preceding day, when the contract was signed. The disappointed suitors had recourse to legal proceedings, and on the 5th of April brought an accusation against the presbytery before the Provincial Synod of Fife at St. Andrew's, who, however, acquitted the presbytery, on the ground of an Act of the General Assembly allowing such marriages, in case of necessity or fear of violent attempts on the person of the child. Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet, the nearest heir male of the House of Buccleuch, was so angry on this occasion that he spoke contemptuously of the House of Harden, and said if the young lady had married his son or grandson there would have been no stain upon her. The Earl of Wemyss retorted that if it were not that he had a respect for Sir John's grey hairs he would make him make that good before he slept, and the Moderator had to interfere and command silence. Charles II. invited the young Countess and her mother to Court in June, 1660, and on the 4th of September created the young husband Earl of Tarras for life. But all this scheming and turmoil came to nothing, for the poor child who was the subject of it died on the 12th of March following, leaving to her sister Anne, then in her tenth year, the dangerous honour of Countess and heiress.
This time all other suitors were distanced by a Royal bastard, and on the 20th of April, 1663, when she was still only twelve, the King married her to his son James by Lucy Walters, the daughter of Richard Walters, of Haverford West, Pembrokeshire, and a boy who had just completed his fourteenth year. He had been on the 14th of February preceding created Baron of Tynedale (Northumberland), Earl of Doncaster (Yorkshire), and DUKE OF ONMOUTH, under which last name he played a memorable and tragic part in our national history. A handsomer bride and bride- groom, it is said, were never seen than this boy and girl on their wedding-day. The beauty of young Monmouth's person was even then the subject of universal admiration, and the little Countess added to youthful charms of no ordinary character a mind far superior to that of her volatile husband. On the day of his marriage Monmouth was created DUKE OF BUCCLE ucH, Earl of Dalkeith, and Lord Scott of Whitchester and Eskdale, to him and the heirs male of his body by the Countess of Buccleucb, whom failing, to the heirs whatsoever of his body succeeding in the estate and Earldom of Buccleuch. This patent was confirmed by an Azt of the Parliament of Scotland in the June of the same year. The Duke took the name of Scott on his marriage, which, accord- ing to the statements of the day, brought him an estate of 10,0001. a year. We need not and cannot here follow him through his political career. Though the ancestor of the present head of the Scotts, he was not a Scott except by adoption, and his character, so far as blood could determine it, derives no element from them. Better than the Stuarts in a generosity of tempera- ment, a humanity, and a sense of honour to which they were strangers, he had the easy morals of the race in matters of domestic life, and something of his Welsh mother's mercurial and volatile temperament. These latter defects led to an estrangement, and at length a complete separation, between him and his outraged wife, nor did they meet again till she visited him on the eve of his execution. The first interview was a painful one, the Duchess seeming chiefly anxious to obtain from her husband a complete exculpation of herself from all share or approval of his disloyal conduct, and an acknowledgment of her having behaved as a good wife, and only differed from him on the points of his infidelity with other women and his unfilial conduct to Charles. A final interview, on the day of his execution—the 15th of July, 1685--at which their children also were present, was more affecting. Monmouth acquitted the Duchess of all blame as respected him- self, and asked her pardon for his own misconduct towards her, praying her to continue her kindness and care to his poor children. At this the Duchess fell down on her knees, and with her eyes full of tears, in her turn begged his pardon if she had at any time displeased him, and then embracing his knees, fell into a swoon, in which she remained some time. The King in 1687 restored to the Duchess the Duke's personal and real estates in England for- feited to the Crown, and the forfeiture itself was rescinded after he Revolution of '89. The Duchess married again in 1688 Charles, third Lord Cornwallis, who died in 1698, and she sur- vived also five of her children by Monmouth and two of those by her second husband, living on in dignified retirement till the 6th of February, 1732, when she was eighty-one years of age. Soon after the restoration of her husband's property she built the present palace of Dalkeith. Her younger son, Henry, was in 1706 created a Scotch peer, as Earl of Deloraine, which title expired with the fourth Earl in 1807.
James, Earl of Dalkeith, the eldest son who survived infancy, served in Flanders, but took no part in public affairs during the reign of William, but on the accession of Anne he returned from abroad to Scotland, and assumed a more prominent position there. He died, however, before his mother, the Duchess-Countess, March 14, 1705, at the age of thirty-one, chiefly noted for his " sweet, affable temper." Indeed from this time we have a new element in- troducel into the Scott character—that of the unfortunate Mon- mouth. This somewhat subdues and softens, the Border tempera- ment, though the latter re-appears from time to time in a fashion more Baited to modern civilization. Lord Dalkeith had married Lady Hamilton Hyde, second daughter of Laurence, first Earl of Rochester of that family, and consequently a near relative of Queens Mary and Anne. By her he left a son Francis, who suc- ceeded his grandfather as Duke of Buccleuch. He was one of the representative peers of Scotland in 1734, joined the Opposition against Sir Robert Walpole, voted for the address to remove that Minister from the King's counsels inFebruary, 1741, and signed the protest against its rejection. On March 23, 1743, he was restored to two of his grandfather's titles, being created Earl of Doncaster and Baron Tynedale, with the precedency of the original patents. He supported the House of Hanover during the crisis of '45, send- ing his tenants to strengthen the defences of Edinburgh when the Young Chevalier advanced on that city. After the battle of Preston Pans the Chevalier rested two nights at Dalkeith before he marched southwards, the owner of course being absent. tinder the Jurisdiction Act of 1747 the Duke was allowed for the royal- ties of Liddesdale, 600/. ; Eskdale, 1,400/. ; Herrick, 4001; Dal- keith, 7001. ; Musselburgh, 300/.,—in all, 3,4001. The Duke died on the 22nd of April, 1751, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. He married in 1720 Lady Jane Douglas, second daughter of James, second Duke of Queensberry and Dover, and by her had two sons, neither of whom survived him, the eldest, Francis, Earl of Dal- keith, who served in two Parliaments, dying of the small-pox in 1750. By his wife, however, Lady Caroline Campbell, eldest of the four daughters and coheiresses of John, the celebrated Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, Lord Dalkeith left a son, Henry, who suc- ceeded his grandfather as third Duke of Buccleuch. His widow mar- ried in 1755 the well-known Charles Townshend, and in August„ 1767, was created Baroness Greenwich. The young Duke was sent on his travels abroad, at the instance of his step-father, who took much trouble in his education, under the care of the celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, with whom he formed a close and fast friend- ship, and of whom he writes after the Doctor's death with the greatest esteem and affection. A few months before coming of age the Duke married Lady Elizabeth Montagu, only daughter oI George, Duke of Montagu, by Mary, youngest daughter and co- heiress of John, Duke of Marlborough. The Duke after his mar- riage chiefly devoted his attention to the improvement of his estates, and won all hearts by his amiable and generous disposition, the Duchess being equally a popular favourite. The Duke during the French Revolution War raised a regiment of "Fencibles" off his own estates, and was a strong adherent of the adminstration of the second Pitt. He died January 11, 1812, the Duchess surviving him to the year 1827. On the death of his mother, Lady Greenwich, January 11, 1794, the Duke succeeded to the landed property acquired by his grandfather, the Duke of Argyll, which did not ge with the Argyll title, and on the death of William, fourth Duke of Queensberry, in December, 1810, he also succeeded to that title, with the Marquisate of Dumfriesshire and several other inferior titles: His younger son, Lord Henry James Montagu, succeeded his grand-. father, the Duke of Montagu, as Baron Montagu of Bargeton, and marrying the Hon. Jane Margaret Douglas, only daughter of Archi- bald, Lord Douglas (the recognized heir general of the House of Douglas),became the father of Elizabeth, present Countess of Home, who now enjoys the Douglas estates. The Duke of Buccleuch ob- tained through his Montagu match the great manor of BEAULIEU in Hampshire, an abbey grant originally made to the Wriottesleys, from whom it passed by marriage to Ralph, Duke of Montagu, in the reign of William III., and thence to the Scotts of Buccleuch. The Manor is 28 miles in circumference, the clear annual revenue was estimated in 1805 at between 4,0001. and 5,000/., and it has since been enormously increased. The eldest son of the third Duke, Charles William, who succeeded him as fourth Duke of Buccleuch and Duke of Queensberry, was repeatedly elected a member of Parliament, and was called to the Upper- House as Baron Tynesdale in April, 1807. He married his cousin,. the Hon. Harriet Catherine Townshend, fourth daughter of Thomas first Viscount Sydney, and granddaughter of Lady Mary Brudenel, sister of George, Duke of Montagu. This lady, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, the " Great Magician of the North," died in August; 1814, and her husband only survived to April 20, 1819, when he, too, died at Lisbon, leaving a son, Walter Francis Montages Douglas Scott, fifth and present Duke of Buccleuch and Duke of Queensberry, who married in 1829 Lady Catherine Thynne, youngest daughter of the second Marquis of Bath, and has several children. The present Duke is a man of considerable energy-, which he has devoted to the improvement of his estates as well as to the political management of Scotland, he being the leader in that country of the Conservative party. He is an excellent man of business, and much respected, though not so openhanded as some of his predecessors. He seems indeed to approximate more to the old Scott character, in one particular at least, that of losing nothing for want of asking or taking. The appropriation of the
site in Whitehall for his house was planned as dexterously as any of his moss-trooping ancestors could have done it, and the tenacity of his hold upon the right of way, and his masterly retreat from his position when public opinion became too strong for him, were equally worthy of the rescuer of Kinmont Willie.
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