Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/99

 represented Buteshire for several years in the Scottish parliament. On 25 April 1693 his place was declared vacant because he had not taken the oath of allegiance and signed the assurance. He was, however, re-elected for Buteshire in 1702, was made a member of Anne's privy council, and on 14 April 1703 was created Earl of Bute, Viscount of Kingarth, Lord Mount Stuart, Cumra, and Inchmarnock. Though named one of the commissioners appointed in 1702 to treat of a union with England (which did not then take effect), he afterwards opposed that measure, and absented himself from parliament when it was carried. He died at Bath on 4 June 1710.

The grandson succeeded as third earl on the death of his father on 28 Jan. 1723, and was educated at Eton, where Horace Walpole was one of his contemporaries. On 13 Aug. 1736 he married Mary, only daughter of Edward Wortley Montagu of Wortley, Yorkshire, and Lady Mary, his wife, the eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, first duke of Kingston [see ], an alliance which ultimately brought the large Wortley estates into his family. He was elected a Scottish representative peer in April 1737, and took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on 24 Jan. 1738 (Journals of the House of Lords, xxv. 97, 159). He occasionally attended the sittings of the house, but took no part in the debates, and was not re-elected to the parliaments of 1741, 1747, and 1754. In 1737 he was appointed one of the commissioners of police for Scotland in the place of the Earl of Hyndford, and on 10 July 1738 he was elected a knight of the Thistle, being invested at Holyrood House on 15 Aug. following. He appears to have spent the greater part of the first nine years of his married life in the island of Bute, amusing himself with the study of agriculture, botany, and architecture (, Letters and Works, 1845–53, ii. 471), and to have removed to London soon after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1745. Here he seems to have acquired a passion for performing ‘at masquerades in becoming dresses, and in plays which he acted in private companies with a set of his own relations’ (, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 1847, i. 47). For his introduction to Frederick, prince of Wales, an event which laid the foundation of his future political career, Bute was indebted to a mere accident. A shower of rain after the Egham races in 1747 delayed the prince's return to Cliefden, and Bute, who happened to be on the race-ground, was summoned to the royal tent to join in a game of whist while the weather cleared (, Historical and Posthumous Works, 1884, i. 319–20). Becoming a favourite of the prince and princess, he was soon constituted the leader of ‘the pleasures of that little, idle, frivolous, and dissipated court,’ and on 16 Oct. 1750 was appointed by Frederick one of the lords of his bedchamber (, Letters and Works, ii. 471). The prince's death in the following year rather increased than diminished Bute's influence in the household, and on 15 Nov. 1756, at the desire of the princess and her son, he was appointed groom of the stole in the new establishment (see Addit. MSS. Brit. Mus. 32684 ff. 92–3, 95, 96–7; Letters and Works of Lady M. W. Montagu, 1837, iii. 131). The king, who always spoke of Bute with the greatest contempt, refused to ‘admit him into the closet to receive the badge of his office, but gave it to the Duke of Grafton, who slipt the gold key into Bute's pocket’ (, Memoirs, 1821, pp. 64–8, 76–80). Bute became the constant companion and confidant of the young prince, and aided the princess in her daily task of imbuing his mind with Bolingbroke's theory that a king should not only reign but govern. For the purpose of instructing him in the principles of the constitution, Bute is said to have obtained from Blackstone a considerable portion of the manuscript of the ‘Commentaries,’ the first volume of which was not published until 1765 (, History of England, 1840, i. 12). As the political adviser of the princess, Bute negotiated a treaty between Leicester House and Pitt against the Duke of Newcastle in 1755, and he took part in the conferences between those statesmen in 1757 (, Memoirs, pp. 37–9, 112–13; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. iv. p. 393). The intimate relations of Bute with the princess gave rise to much scandal, which, though founded on mere conjecture, was widely spread and commonly believed (ib. pp. 38–9;, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 204–5; , Letters and Works, ii. 471).

On the accession of George III to the throne, Bute produced the declaration to the council, which he had kept ‘lying by him for several years before George II died’ (, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 1875, i. 43; see, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 1894, i. 7–8). He was sworn a member of the privy council on 27 Oct. 1760, and on 15 Nov. following was appointed groom of