1063 



BUTE, EARL OF. 



BUTLER, CHARLES. 



10B4 



making an assignation in the Chateau de Constancierea, where the in- 

 jured husband awaited Bussy with a numerous ambuscade of armed 

 men, and, in spite of a most courageous resistance, put him to death on 

 August 19th, 1579. (De Thou, Ixviii. 9.) With the strange taste for 

 loathsome subjects which characterises so many of the present race of 

 popular French writers, Dumas has chosen the fate of Bussy for the 

 subject of a romance ' La Dame de Montaoreau.' 



BUTE, JOHN STUART, third EARL OF, was the eldest son of 

 John, earl of Bute, in the Scottish peerage, and of Lady Anne Camp- 

 bell, daughter of the first duke of Argyll. He was born in 1713, and 

 received his education at Eton. He appears to have been introduced 

 to public life in February 1737, by being elected one of the sixteen 

 Scottish representative peers. From that period he seems to have 

 proceeded in a steady course of court favour. In 1737 he was 

 appointed one of the Lords Commissioners of Police in Scotland, a 

 board which was suppressed in 1782. It was probably about this time 

 that he was introduced to the notice of Frederick, prince of Wales. 

 Of the circumstances of this introduction, ' The Contrast ' gives the 



much better than in his late performances in the character of a states- 

 man, that he was greatly admired, and particularly by his late Royal 

 Highness Frederick, pi-ince of Wales, who took great notice of this 

 occasional Roscius, and invited him to Leicester House." Lord 

 Waldegrave (' Memoirs,' p. 36) also states the prince used frequently 

 to say of him, " Bute is a fine showy man, and would make an excel- 

 lent ambassador in any court where there was no business." In 

 August 173S Lord Bute was made a Knight of the Thistle, and a few 

 days after one of the lords of the bedchamber to the prince. On the 

 death <! Frederick, in March 1751, Lord Bute retired for some time to 

 the country ; but it soon became apparent that he was not only con- 

 sulted by the princess in regard to all points connected with the 

 education of her son, afterwards George III., but that he was in all 

 political matters her chief adviser. He was eventually appointed 

 Groom of the Stole to the young prince ; and Junius scarcely appears 

 to have exaggerated when he said that from "that moment Lord Bute 

 never Buffered the Prince of Wales to be an instant out of his sight" 



On the accession of George III. (October 1760), Lord Bute, who had 

 obtained a great ascendancy over the mind of his pupil, was sworn a 

 member of the privy council, and made Groom of the Stole. In 

 March 1761 he resigned that office, and was appointed one of the 

 principal secretaries of state. This elevation of the favourite to a 

 place in the government was effected by the dismissal of Mr. Legge, 

 the able chancellor of the exchequer, and by the concerted resignation 

 of the Earl of Holderness, who resigned his place in consideration 

 of a handsome pension, and the reversion of the wardenship of the 

 Cinque Ports. Mr. Pitt however still continued for some time 

 longer nominally at tlie head of the administration. On the 5th of 

 October Mr. 1'itt retired from the cabinet before the growing influence 

 of the new secretary. Of the heads of the old Whig connexion, the 

 Duko of Newcastle, who was First Lord of the Treasury, still clung 

 to office ; but at length, ou the 29th of May 1762, he resigned, and 

 Lord Bute was appointed his successor. On the 22nd of September 

 following he was admitted a Knight of the Garter. On the 4th of 

 April 17C1 his countess had been created a British peeress, by the title 

 of Baroness Mountstuart, with remainder to her issue male by his 

 lordship. 



The history of the administration of Lord Bute belongs to the 

 history of the country, and it is one which it is impossible to read 

 without feelings of something like humiliation. His career was shaped 

 apparently, from first to last, with a view to hia own elevation, and 

 the removal of every one from office who was likely to stand iu his 

 way was effected in a more open and unscrupulous manner than had 

 been seen for some years. His sudden rise, unsupported by any 

 description of ability, soon called forth its natural accompaniments 

 in bitter personal attacks and unscrupulous libels. To say nothing of 

 the well-known ' History of the Minority,' the object of which is a 

 defence of the politics of Lord Chatham and Earl Temple, Wilkes's 

 weekly paper, the ' North Briton,' which began and ended with Lord 

 I'.nte's administration, is throughout occupied in the abuse of his lord- 

 ship and everything connected with him. The ' North Briton ' was 

 set up in opposition to the 'Briton,' a paper established in the interest 

 of the minister. 



Lord Bute was certainly the most unpopular English minister of 

 modern timea. While he madly attempted to govern the country by 

 the king's name alone, he had opposed to him not only all the old 

 factions of the state, which he aimed at putting down and destroying, 

 but the whole nation ; and professing to hold the doctrine that the 

 ministers were not really the executive government, but literally ouly 

 the servants or clerks of the crown, he surrounded himself while in 

 power with individuals in general utterly incapable of adding strength 

 to liis ministry by their abilities or personal importance. The late 

 Lord Liverpool indeed (then Mr. Jenkinson) was his private secretary; 

 but his chancellor of the exchequer, for instance, was Sir Francis 

 Dashwood, afterwards Lord Despenser, a person wholly incompetent. 



The inot important event iu Lord Bute's administration was the 

 termination of the war with France, by the peace of Paris, concluded 



February 10th 1763. It was long a strong popular belief that the 

 English minister was bribed by France to consent to this treaty ; but 

 no evidence worthy of credit was ever brought forward to confirm 

 this rumour. But it may be mentioned as a proof how far the belief 

 extended, that Wilberforce records in his 'Diary' under July 1(5, 

 1789, that Lord Camden told him, "he was sure Lord Bute got 

 money by the peace of Paris." As we said, there is no good ground 

 for any such belief, but Lord Bute's undignified eagerness for the 

 peace, and the readiness he was known to have expressed to have 

 accepted far less honourable terms than those ultimately obtained 

 unworthy as they were generally esteemed were quite sufficient to 

 give countenance to the rumour. The peace was violently denounced 

 in the House of Commons by Pitt, who went so far in his invective 

 as to refer to Bute as " not the foreign euemy but another enemy." 

 Bute however had large majorities in both houses, and he carried 

 himself with his usual haughtiness, dismissing from their employ- 

 ments every one who had ventured to protest against his measures. 

 The dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquis of Rockingham, 

 had their lord-lieutenancies taken from them, and it is affirmed that 

 Bute carried his enmity so far as to dismiss inoffensive clerks from 

 their employments in the public offices, " merely because they had 

 been, in the first instance, recommended to them by some statesmen 

 adverse to the peace " (Mahon, v. 23, chap, xli.) But the storm of 

 unpopularity was too fierce for Bute to make head against it. On the 

 8th of April 1763 Lord Bute suddenly resigned. His friends generally 

 gave out at the time that he had taken office only with the purpose 

 of bringing the war to an end, and that iu now retiring he only followed 

 a determination which he had from the first openly avowed. His own 

 account however is somewhat different, as it is given in a letter to a 

 friend, which has been published by Mr. Adolphus. " Single," he 

 there says, " in a cabinet of my own forming, no soul in the house of 

 lords to support me except two peers (Lords Denbigh and Pomfret), 

 both the secretaries of state silent, and the lord chief justice, whom 

 I brought myself into office, voting for me, yet speaking against me 

 the ground I tread upon is so hollow, that I am afraid not only of 

 falling myself, but of involving my royal master in my ruin : it is 

 time for me to retire." His lordship's own powers of oratory were 

 not such as to make up for the silence of his colleagues. He expressed 

 himself with a deliberate pomposity of utterance, his words slowly 

 dropping out at regular intervals, which the witty Charles Towushend 

 used to call the minister's minute guns. 



Though Lord Bute retired from office he still retained the confidence 

 of the king ; and he undoubtedly nominated his immediate successors. 

 In the following August, also, when the sudden death of the Earl of 

 Egre'mont, one of the secretaries of state, again shook the new cabinet, 

 he engaged in a negociation, which came to nothing, with the view of 

 bringing Lord Chatham into office. Lord Bute's continued influence, 

 as supposed to be exerted behind the throne, was long a favourite 

 topic of popular declamation ; but no proof of the fact was ever 

 brought forward, and all the recent evidence which has appeared 

 tends to show that from the time Bute ceased to be a minister, the 

 king began gradually to rely more and more on his own judgment. 

 Bute himself authorised his son to state '' upon bis solemn word and 

 honour," that he never offered an advice or opinion concerning the 

 disposition of offices or the conduct of measures, either directly or 

 indirectly, by himself or any other, from the time the late Duke of 

 Cumberland was consulted in the arrangement of a ministry in 1765." 

 As Lord Mahon observes ('Hist, of Eug.' c. xlv.), "this statement is 

 as to the main fact the cessation of all intercourse between the king 

 and the earl quite sufficient and satisfactory." (See also Lord John 

 Russell's ' Introduction to Bedford Papers,' vol. iii.) 



According to Sir Egerton Brydges, in his edition of Collins's 

 'Peerage,' Lord Bute passed the last six or seven years of his life in 

 the most deep and unbroken retirement, principally at a marine villa, 

 which he built on the edge of the cliff at Christchurch, in Hampshire, 

 overlooking the Needles and the Isle of Wight. Here his principal 

 delight was to listen to the melancholy roar of the sea." " He was 

 more fond of the sciences," it is added, " than of works of imagination ; 

 but his favourite study was botany, on which he printed at his own 

 expense a work iu nine volumes quarto, of plates appertaining only to 

 Englam 1 . Only twelve copies were printer), of which the expense 

 amounted to 10,0001." Lord Bute died at his house in South Audley- 

 street, London, on the 10th of March 1792. He had married in 

 1736, Mary, the only daughter of Edward Wortley Montagu, of 

 Wortley, in Yorkshire ; and by that lady, who eventually inherited a 

 large fortune by the death of her brother, Edward W. Montagu, the 

 traveller, he had seven sons and six daughters. His eldest son was 

 in 1796, created Marquess of Bute, in the British peerage. A daughter, 

 Lady Louisa Stuart, who contributed some interesting ' Introductory 

 Anecdotes' to Lord Wharncliffe's edition of Lady Mary Wortley 

 Montagu's works, died in August 1851, when within a few days of 

 completing her 94th year. 



BUTLEK, CHARLES, was born in London of a Roman Catholic 

 family in 1750. He was the son of Mr. James Butler, who was the 

 youngest son of Simon Butler of Appletree, Northamptonshire : his 

 mother's name was Grano. After receiving the rudiments of education 

 at a Roman Cath&lic school at Hammersmith, he was sent to the 

 English college at Douay ; and on quitting that removed to Lincoln's 



