The Dukes (67 page)
As it happened, he died without a gun in his hand. The succession to his titles was split between two families, and the dukedom was separated from the earldom of Sutherland for the first time in 124 years. The earldom, being able to pass through the female line, went to his niece Mrs Janson, who is now the 24th Countess of Sutherland, with Dunrobin Castle as her seat, a smaller house in Sutherland as her home, and a house in Edwardes Square, London. She has twin sons, one of whom is heir to the earldom and bears the name of Baron Strathnaver, a spurious title which has never been a peerage dignity and was never created 'by patent. It is merely a territorial style, not available to the heir apparent as a courtesy title. He is also Master of Sutherland, a peculiarly Scottish title which is born by legal right by the heir apparent or presumptive to a Scottish peerage title.
30
Thus the heir to the Duke of Argyll is Master of Campbell (though generally known as Marquess of Lome), and the heir to Lord Lovat is Master of Lovat, and is known as such. Lord Strathnaver would have far more right to call himself Master of Sutherland, for this is not a courtesy title at all, but a peerage dignity vested in him. However, long usage has established the custom of the heir being referred to as Lord Strathnaver, and it offends no one. Lord Strathnaver, who has been a police constable, married twice. By his second wife he has a son and heir, Alexander.
So where does the new Duke of Sutherland come from? He was born the Hon. John Egerton, son of the Earl of Ellesmere. In 1939 he married Lady Diana Percy, daughter of the Duke of Northumberland (and sister to the present Duke), just before going to war, where he was captured and imprisoned by the enemy. In 1944 he succeeded to his father's title as Earl of Ellesmere, and in 1963 became Duke of Sutherland on the death of his distant relation. It is curious that the dukedom was created for the benefit of the Leveson-Gowers, yet the name of Leveson-Gower has now disappeared from the title. The present Duke, who has no children, has an heir presumptive, Cyril Egerton, born in 1905, who has a son. So the name of Egerton seems assured in the Sutherland descent. This is because the Duke is descended from the 1st Duke's
second
son, Lord Francis Leveson-Gower (1800-1857), who was created Earl of Ellesmere and assumed the surname Egerton to fulfil a condition which enabled him to inherit in 1845 the estates of his bachelor uncle the last Duke of Bridgwater (whose name
was
Egerton). Old Bridgwater would be delighted if he could know that his surname has survived at the expense of the Leveson-Gowers.
The Duke has a house in Roxburghshire, purchased by his father in 1912 and a house in Suffolk. The line of which he is representative has much more agreeable characteristics than that of the first five Dukes of Sutherland. His ancestor, Lord Francis, in no way resembled his insensitive father. Nothing but praise for his gentleness, his erudition, his charm, informs opinions of contemporaries. He was a member of the Roxburghe Club and himself wrote twenty-six books. He had no enemies, was always more considerate of others than of himself, pursued truth and virtue all his life. He was a perfect example of how to live. Even Creevey laid aside his acidquill to admit, "greater civility I defy anyone to receive than I have done from him".
31
And Greville, to whom he was related, penned the most splendid tribute. On inheriting the Bridgwater estate, he "found himself the possessor of vast wealth, and surrounded by a population sunk in ignorance and vice". He then spent the remainder of his life devoted to the welfare of the people in his charge. "He employed his wealth liberally in promoting the material comfort and raising the moral condition of those by whose labour that wealth was produced." He built churches, schools, libraries. He became "the object of general veneration and attachment". But, says Greville, only his family had the luck to know the excellence and charm of his character. "He regarded with indifference the ordinary objects of wordly ambition. He lived in and for his family, and he was their joy, their delight, and their pride."
32
A final curiosity. Lord Francis Leveson-Gower may well not have been the son of the 1st Duke of Sutherland at all, which would explain why he resembled him so little. It was widely believed that his father was Lord Carlisle. His "official" father had anyway been advised by doctors to abstain from intercourse with his wife in the year that she became pregnant. If this is true, then the present Duke's connection with the ducal line is not by blood, but by adoption.
references
1.
Eric Richards,
The Leviathan of Wealth
, p. 4.
2.
Duke of Sutherland,
Looking Back,
p. 20.
3.
ibid.,
p. 21; D.N.B.
4.
Greville, II, 404.
5.
John Prebble,
The Highland Clearances,
p. 63.
6.
Creevey
Papers,
Vol. I, p. 216.
7.
Prebble,
op. cit.,
p. 62.
8.
Lord Granville Leveson-Gower,
Private Correspondence,
Vol. I,
p. 118.
9.
Prebble, 60.
10.
P. Gaskell,
Morvern Transformed,
p. 9.
11.
Prebble, 67-79, 85-91, 107, 111,113, 118.
12.
Richards,
op. cit.,
p. 284.
13.
ibid.,
193.
ibid.,
168.
14.
Professor Checkland, Foreword to Richards,
op. cit.
15.
F. F. Darling,
West Highland Survey,
p. 6.
16.
People's Paper,
12 March 1853.
17.
Greville, II, 404.
18.
Greevey,
Life and Times,
-p. 366.
19.
Lady Holland to Her Son,
p. 182.
20.
Greville, V, 227.
21.
Lord Ronald Gower, Vol. I, p. 317.
22.
ibid.,
I, 324.
23.
Leaves from the Notebooks
of Lady Dorothy Nevill, p. 127.
24.
Augustus Hare,
In My Solitary Life,
p. 80.
25.
Sutherland,
Looking Back,
p. 38.
26.
Londonderry Papers, D/Lo/F 631
27.
Complete Peerage.
28.
Sutherland,
Looking Back,
pp. 55-6, 64.
29.
Valentine Heywood,
British Titles,
pp. 103-5.
30.
Creevey,
Life and Times,
p. 283.
Greville, VII, 271-2.
Duke of Rutland; Duke of Newcastle; Duke of Fife
The three Dukes of this chapter are not connected in any way. One was a Whig who eluded fame, another a Tory who chased it, and the third an unknown Scot who had fame thrust upon him when he married into the Royal Family. They are united only by the hand of irony. For the descendants of the reluctant Duke of Rutland have gone from strength to strength, those of the eager Duke of Newcastle have suffered one catastrophe after another, and those of the Duke
of Fife have withdrawn once more into the shadows.
* * *
When William III died in 1702, in his pocket was found a letter from Rachel Lady Russell, begging the King "in the most submissive manner imaginable" to make the Earl of Rutland a duke. What, one might ask, was it to do with Lady Russell? Further down in the letter, which is now at Chatsworth, she reveals her interest and at the same time her silken subtle blackmail. "Be pleased to allow me to answer for all those I am related to", she says, "they will look on themselves equally honoured with Lord Rutland by your favour to his family."
1
And there you have it. Rachel was the widow of William Russell, martyred for his part in the Rye House Plot, and now a posthumous national hero under King William. Parliament and people were willing to do anything to please her. As compensation for her loss, Rachel already had two dukes in the family — her son was Duke of Bedford, and her son-in-law was Duke of Devonshire, both created in 1694. She had one other daughter, who had married Lord Roos, later, Earl of Rutland. Rachel wanted duchesses for daughters, a countess was not good enough. She pressed the case in spite of Rutland himself, who was really not very interested in being a duke and did nothing to promote his advancement. He was even a little embarrassed by it all.
The King died with the letter in his pocket, and Lady Russell took up the matter with his successor, Queen Anne, immediately. She persuaded her daughter to write to Rutland imploring him to accept the title when it was offered. Queen Anne prevaricated. She was well disposed towards Rutland, who had sheltered her at Belvoir Castle when her father, James II, was overthrown, but did not want to create jealousies among her peers. She was, she said, "determined not to create or promote any one single person, there are so many that ask, and whoever is refused may be angry". Lady Russell would not let the matter rest. "I shall continue to be as watchful as I can", she wrote to Rutland, "that we miss not what we think we have a certain assurance of. Courts are slippery places."
2
Rachel eventually extracted from the Queen a promise that she would make good the late King's intention, but only after she had made John Churchill Duke of Marlborough. Rachel grudgingly conceded that this would be proper. Accordingly John Manners, Lord Roos's father, was created Duke of Rutland and Marquess of Granby on 29th March 1703, three months after Marlborough. The girl for whom all this was done, Catherine Russell, Lady Roos, died too soon to enjoy it. She was Duchess of Rutland for less than a year, dying in childbirth at her ninth pregnancy in
1711,
when her husband had been Duke for nine months.
The Manners family took to their new distinction easily and without fuss. They had already been considerable landowners for over 600 years and were nicely settled in their grand style of country living. Their very name may testify to their significance. "Manners" could derive from Mesnieres, the town near Rouen where the family lived before the Conquest, or it could be from Medieval Latin
manerium,
meaning "manor-house". The first to be mentioned in history is Robert de Maneriis in the eleventh century. Their two seats today are Belvoir Castle (pronounced "Beaver"), and romantic Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, next door to Chatsworth.
Belvoir Castle has belonged to the Manners since 1508, coming into the family by the customary route of marriage (it had previously been the home of the Barons de Ros). The other house, Haddon Hall, is, in the words of Nicholas Pevsner, "the English castle
par excellence,
not the forbidding fortress on an unassailable crag, but the large, rambling, safe, grey lovable home of knights and their ladies, the unreasonable dream-castle of those who think of the Middle Ages as a time of chivalry and valour and noble feelings".
3
Haddon Hall came to the Manners through a romantic elopement, the archetypical tale of chivalry. John Manners, second son of the 1st Earl of Rutland, fell in love with one of the daughters at Haddon Hall - the beautiful auburn-haired Dorothy Vernon. Dorothy lived there with father, Sir George Vernon, stepmother, and sister. Sir George did not approve of young Manners, and forbade his daughter to entertain him. But such was the strength of their love that John Manners disguised himself as a forester and came to Haddon Hall to see Dorothy undetected. These clandestine interviews went on for a while, until Sir George got wind of them, and locked his daughter up. Father, stepmother and sister kept her virtually prisoner at Haddon. But they did not reckon on John's determination. The night that Dorothy's sister was married, while all and sundry were distracted by the festivities in the ballroom, Dorothy slipped out, through a door which still exists, down the steps that are still there, on to the bridge, where she found her shining white knight who whisked her off on galloping steed into the balmy night. They galloped all night long until they reached Aylston, in Leicestershire, where they were married. It is the best of all elopement stories, and the name of Dorothy Vernon justly reverberates through the centuries. Sir George died and John and Dorothy eventually returned to Haddon Hall, where it may be supposed they lived happily ever after. The love story is important, because their grandson became 8th Earl of Rutland, and his descendants continue in direct line to the present Duke of Rutland.
4
The earldom was created in 1525, conferred by Henry VIII upon Thomas Manners
(c.
1492-1543). Thomas was thus rewarded for his loyalty to the King, a loyalty which had taken Henry's side in the divorce question. He had pleaded with Pope Clement VII to accede to Henry's wishes,
5
and when his embassy was unsuccessful, had been one of the judges at the trial of Anne Boleyn. Thomas, who was also descended through the female line from a sister of Edward IV, was showered with lands at the dissolution of the monasteries by a grateful Henry.
Since then, the family has shown an abundant lack of ambition. They have remained in the country, minding their own business, and looking after their dependants in the best traditions of landowners' responsibility. Writing about the 5th Duke of Rutland (1778-1857), Greville calls him selfish, in the sense of self-indulgent, but acknowledges that his patrician approach is more beneficial than is often realised. "The Duke of Rutland is as selfish a man as any of his class, that is, he never does what he does not like, and spends his whole life in a round of such pleasures as suit his taste, but he is neither a foolish nor a bad man, and partly from a sense of duty, partly from inclination, he devotes time and labour to the interest and welfare of the people who live and labour on his estate." Greville points out that he attended all the meetings of the residents, invited anyone who had a complaint to see him privately, and was more a friend than "political quacks and adventurers who flatter and cajole them".
0
His second son, Lord John Manners, who was later 7th Duke of Rutland (1818-1906), founded a political group devoted to raising the condition of the people, called "Young England". Manners and Smythe and a few Cambridge friends were responsible for the movement. They were disciples of Disraeli, and they were Tories. They wanted to reconstruct Toryism on a popular basis, and thought the working classes could be trusted to follow them. They wanted the advancement of the people, but under the leadership of the aristocracy, who would have the experience necessary to construct sensible policies. Manners advocated public holidays and factory reform. The common enemy, in his view, of the aristocracy and the working classes was middle-class liberalism. Disraeli drew a portrait of the Duke when he was Lord John Manners in his novel
Coningsby,
the Duke is "Lord Henry Sydney", and of him Disraeli writes, "he devoted his time and thought, labour and life, to one vast and noble purpose, the elevation of the condition of the great body of the people".
7
The "Young England" group lasted only a few years.
Another example is afforded by the 4th Duke of Rutland (1754- 1787) who spoke out against the punitive taxation imposed on the American colonies, his ally in this being once again the Duke of Richmond. He said that the taxation was "commenced in iniquity, is pursued with resentment, and can terminate in nothing but blood". He proposed a motion in the House of Lords "to cause the most speedy and effectual measures to be taken for restoring peace in America", which was defeated by 243 votes to 86. This duke's father was the famous Marquess of Granby, the General (1721- 1770), son of the 3rd Duke who outlived him. Granby, though he waged war, wanted peace and, though an aristocrat, was loved by his soldiers. There are few examples in our history of a more popular soldier, a fact illustrated by the number of pubs and inns up and down the country which bear his name. Only the Duke of Wellington has more public houses named after him.
Granby was Colonel of the Leicester Blues, and Commander-in- Chief in Europe. The Battle of Minden is justly associated with his courage and wisdom. He married a daughter of the Proud Duke of Somerset, and was painted by Reynolds no less than twelve times.
He was a blazing hero, whose career should have ended in glory. Unwarranted attacks by the satirist Junius, who wanted to break the government of the Duke of Grafton and used Granby as a lever, spoilt the last years of his life. He still excited admiration everywhere, was revered by King and commoner alike; "George II respected and loved him; George III respected and feared him."
8
Politically motivated malice could not harm his reputation for long. When he died of stomach gout at the age of forty-nine, the whole country mourned. Wraxall wrote: "The celebrated Marquess of Granby, notwithstanding the attack made on him by Junius, and the greater misfortune that he underwent of being defended by Sir William Draper, left behind him a name dear to Englishmen."
9
William Pitt simply said, "The loss to England is, indeed, irreparable."
10
Granby's son, the 4th Duke of Rutland, died even younger at the age of thirty-three. In his case, it was disease of the liver which carried him off, brought about by a gargantuan appetite. He began each day with a breakfast of six or seven turkey's eggs,
11
washed down all day long with port. He was not the only one, of course; the Georgian period was drowned in port, which explains why so many characters in this book died of gout. Drunkenness was so common that debates in the Houses of Parliament were frequently unintelligible because the assembled representatives of the people were too inebriated to know what they were saying. Old Jockey of Norfolk (the 1 ith Duke of Norfolk) was alive at this time, and the most celebrated drunk in England. Rutland certainly killed himself by gross overindulgence. He was "a victim of his irregularities", as a contemporary tactfully put it.
12
After death, his body was opened, and "his liver appeared so much decayed and wasted, as to render his recovery impossible". There is a touching story that he asked to see his wife shortly before he died, and, realising that she was then too far away, said, "In point of time, it will be impossible, I must therefore be content to die, with her image before my mind's eye."
15
His wife was Lady Mary Somerset, a daughter of the 4th Duke of Beaufort. She was one of the celebrated beauties of the age, rivalling her contemporary Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. She was the very essence of femininity, magnetising the gaze of all who saw her. "Grace itself formed her limbs, and accompanied her movements . . . the Plantagenets could not have been represented by a more faultless sample of female loveliness."
14
The writer informs us that he is neither partial nor exaggerating in his description. But she fell far short of the formidable Georgiana in personality. While Georgiana seduced everyone with the sparkle of her conversation, the Duchess of Rutland was rather dull. She was to be seen and not heard. The Duke consoled himself by taking more lively mistresses, the most regular of which was a Mrs Billington. According to a saucy article among the
tete-a-tete
series, his grandfather the 3rd Duke (1696- 1779) had been practically insatiable. "We shall not attempt", it says, "to enumerate all the grizettes Cornuto [the Duke] has successively enjoyed within these eight months, as the catalogue would swell this article far beyond its usual extent."
15
Two more duchesses of Rutland have made their mark. The wife of the 5th Duke had a well-known affair with H.R.H. the Duke of York (uncle to Queen Victoria), and, more recently, the wife of the 8th Duke was an artist of no small distinction. This was Violet, Duchess of Rutland,
nee
Violet Lindsay, mother of Lady Diana Cooper (born 1892). She began marriage as Mrs Manners, as her husband was then Mr Henry Manners, son of Lord John Manners; Lord John then became 7th Duke, and Mr Henry eventually 8th Duke of Rutland. Duchess Violet's work was pre-Raphaelite in style inspired particularly by Burne-Jones. Her portraits in pencil and water-colour show an extremely delicate and sensitive touch. If she was not taken as seriously as she deserved, she had her rank to blame which acted as a disavantage to her. But foreigners, not saddled with the tangle of confused emotions and prejudices which the English class-system breeds, have never doubted her worth as an artist. Her work hangs in the Louvre in Paris. Her most accomplished piece is not a drawing, but a sculpture, inspired, by poetry and personal tragedy. It is a statue of her eldest son, who died at the age of nine in 1894, and it can now be seen at Haddon Hall.