like it. The dogs would not have hurt me, and I am sure that I made friends with them."

1859, Death of Lady Bute

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 constituted 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 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 attachment, 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[1] (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 convinced, 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 the matter. After a month we became convinced that the Vice-Chancellor would decide against us; and on the night of April 16th Lady E. left the hotel secretly, and with her maid and me shot the moon to Edinburgh, where we arrived at 7 next morning.[2]

The Marquess of Bute æt 2
from a drawing by R. T. Ross at Cardiff Castle

1859, Rival guardians

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 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 you will never gain his affections), while I have always done so, as was his poor mother's invariable custom.[3]

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 by 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 characterised 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 universities. Lady Elizabeth absolutely refused to comply with the order of the Court, and was consequently removed in July, 1860, from the office of guardian. Meanwhile the case was complicated by the intervention of the Scottish tutor-at-law, Colonel 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.

1861, Lords' decision

The House of Lords, in giving the decision which brought this long litigation to a close, had raised no objection to the continued residence of the young peer with the Earl of Galloway, an arrangement which had already been approved by the Court of Chancery. Bute had, in fact, at the time the judgment was pronounced, been living for some