STUART, JOHN, third earl of
Bute, and prime minister of Great Britain, was the eldest son of the second
earl of Bute, by lady Anne Campbell, daughter of Archibald, first duke of
Argyle. He was born in the Parliament Square, Edinburgh, May 25, 1713, and
succeeded to the title, on the death, of his father, in January, 1723. In
April, 1737, on a vacancy occurring in the representation of the Scottish
peerage, the earl of Bute was chosen to fill it: he was re-chosen at the
general elections of 1761, 1768, and 1774. His lordship married, August 24,
1736, Mary, only daughter of the celebrated lady Mary Wortley Montagu, by
whom he had a numerous family. In his first introduction to court life, lord
Bute had the good fortune to ingratiate himself with the princess of Wales,
mother of George III., who admitted him to that close superintendence of the
education of her son, which was the foundatiton of all his historical
importance. In 1750, he was appointed one of the lords of the bed-chamber to
Frederick, prince of Wales; and on the settlement or the household of the
heir apparent, in 1756, the earl of Bute was appointed his groom of the
stole. His lordship acquired the full confidence and friendship of the young
prince; and is believed to have been chiefly instrumental in training and
informing his mind. Before the prince’s accession to the throne in 1760,
Lord Bute was continued in his situation as groom of the stole; and in
March, next year, on the dismissal of the Whig ministry, was appointed one
of the principal secretaries of state. His lordship was in the same year
appointed keeper and ranger of Richmond park, on the resignation of the
princess Amelia; and invested with the order of the garter,--an honour, as
is well known, rarely bestowed, except upon persons who have rendered
important services to the state.
The elevation of a nobleman,
only known heretofore as the royal preceptor, and who was also obnoxious to
vulgar prejudices on account of his country, to such high place and honour,
naturally excited much irritation in England. This feeling was greatly
increased, when, in May, 1762, his lordship was constituted first lord of
the treasury. It reached its acme, on his lordship taking measures for
concluding a war with France, in which the British arms had been singularly
successful, and which the nation in general wished to see carried on, till
that country should be completely humbled. The great Whig oligarchy, which,
after swaying the state from the accession of the house of Hanover, had now
seen the last days of its dominancy, was still powerful, and it received an
effective, though ignoble aid, from a popular party, headed by the infamous
Wilkes, and inflamed by other unprincipled demagogues, chiefly through the
medium of the press. A newspaper, called the Briton, had been started for
the purpose of defending the new administration. It was met by one called
the North Briton, conducted by Wilkes, and which, in scurrility and party
violence, exceeded all that went before it. Wilkes, it is said, might at one
time have been bribed to silence by lord Bute; he now took up the pen with
the determined purpose, as he himself expressed it, of writing his lordship
out of office. Neither the personal character of the minister, nor his
political proceedings furnishing much matter for satire, this low-minded,
though clever and versatile man, set up his country and countrymen as a
medium through which to assail him. The earl, seeing it in vain to contend
against prejudices so firmly rooted, lost no time, after concluding the
peace of Paris, in resigning; he gave up office on the 16th of April, 1763,
to the great surprise of his enemies, who, calculating his motives by their
own, expected him, under all circumstances, to adhere to the so-called good
things which were in his grasp.
The Bute administration,
brief as it was, is memorable for the patronage which it extended to
literature. The minister, himself a man of letters and of science, wished
that the new reign should be the commencement of an Augustan era; and he
accordingly was the means of directing the attention of the young monarch to
a number of objects, which had hitherto languished for want of the crown
patronage. One of the most remarkable effects of the spirit infused by his
lordship into the royal mind was, the rescuing of the majestic mind
of Johnson from the distresses of a dependence on letters for subsistence; a
transaction, for which many bosoms, yet to be animated with the breath of
life, will expand in gratitude at the mentlon of the name of George III.
The ministerial character of
lord Bute has been thus drawn by an impartial writer: "Few ministers have
been more hated than lord Bute was by the English nation; yet, if we
estimate his conduct from facts, without being influenced by local or
temporary prejudices, we can by no means find just grounds for the odium
which he incurred. As a war minister, though his plans discovered little of
original genius, and naturally proceeded from the measures of his
predecessor, the general state of our resources, the conquests achieved, and
the dispositions of our fleets and armies, yet they were judicious; the
agents appointed to carry them on were selected with discernment, and the
whole result was successful. His desire of peace, after so long and
burdensome a war, was laudable, but perhaps too eagerly manifested.
As a negotiator, he did not procure the best terms, which, from our
superiority, might have been obtained. His project of finance, in itself
unobjectionable, derived its impolicy from the unpopularity of his
administration. Exposed from unfounded prejudices to calumny, he deserved
and earned dislike by his haughty deportment. The manners which custom might
have sanctioned from an imperious chieftain to his servile retainers in a
remote corner of the island, did not suit the independent spirit of the
English metropolis. The respectable mediocrity of his talents, suitable
attainments, and his decent moral character, deserved an esteem which his
manners precluded. Since he could not, like Pitt, command genius, he ought,
like the duke of Newcastle, to have conciliated by affable demeanour. His
partizans have praised the tenacity of lord Bute in his purposes; a quality
which, guided by wisdom in the pursuit of right, and combined with the power
to render success ultimately probable, is magnanimous but, without these
requisites, is stubborn obstinacy. No charge has been more frequently made
against lord Bute, than that he was a promoter of arbitrary principles and
measures. This is an accusation for which its supporters can find no grounds
in his particular acts; they endeavoured therefore to establish their
assertion by circuitous arguments. Lord Bute had been the means of
dispossessing the Whig connection of power, and had given Scotsmen
appointments which were formerly held by the friends of the duke of
Newcastle. To an impartial investigation, however, it appears evident, that
lord Bute preferred himself as minister to the duke of Newcastle. If we
examine his particular nominations, we shall find that he neither exalted
the friends of liberty nor despotism, but his own friends. It would probably
have been better for the country if lord Bute had never been minister; but
all the evils that may be traced to that period did not necessarily proceed
from his measures, as many of them flowed from circumstances over which he
had no control. Candour must allow that the comprehensive principle on which
his majesty resolved to govern was liberal and meritorious, though
patriotism may regret that he was not more successful in his first choice.
The administration of Bute teaches an instructive lesson, that no man can be
long an effectual minister of this country, who will not occasionally
attend, not only to the well-founded judgment, but also to the prejudices,
of Englishmen."
The earl of Bute spent the
most of the remainder of his life in retirement, at his seat of Luton in
Bedfordshire, but not without the suspicion of still maintaining a secret
influence over the royal counsels. "The spirit of the Favourite," says
Junius, "had some apparent influence over every administration; and every
set of ministers preserved an appearance of duration, as long as they
submitted to that influence." The chief employment, however, of the
ex-minister was the cultivation of literature and science. He was more fond
of books of information than of imagination. His favourite study was botany,
with which he acquainted himself to such an extent, that the first botanists
in Europe were in the habit of consulting his lordship. He composed a work
on English plants, in nine quarto volumes, of which only sixteen copies were
thrown off; the text as well as the figures of the plants being engraved on
copper-plates, and these plates, it is said, immediately cancelled, though
the work cost upwards of one thousand pounds. He presented to the Winchester
college a bronze statue of their founder, William of Wykham, supposed to
have been the work of some great artist in the fourteenth century. It is a
full figure in the episcopal habit, sixteen inches high, and executed with
remarkable elegance. His lordship was elected one of the trustees of the
British Museum in 1765, held the office of chancellor of the Marischal
college and, on the institution of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland
(1780) was elected president. He was an honorary fellow of the Royal College
of Physicians at Edinburgh, and to him the university of that city was
indebted for its useful appendage, the Botanic Garden.
Part of his lordship’s time
in his latter years was spent at a marine villa which he built on the edge
of the cliff at Christ Church, in Hampshire, overlooking the Needles and the
Isle of Wight. Here his principal delight was to listen to the melancholy
roar of the sea; of which the plaintive sounds were probably congenial to a
spirit soured with what he believed to be the ingratitude of mankind. His
lordship died at his house in South Audley Street, London, March 10, 1792,
in the seventy-ninth year of his age. Of his private character and manners,
which may now properly be touched upon, an acute observer has written as
follows:—"I never knew a man with whom one could be so long tête a tête
without being tired. His knowledge was so extensive, and consequently his
conversation so varied, that one thought one’s self in the company of
several persons, with the advantage of being sure of an even temper in a man
whose goodness, politeness, and attention, were never wanting to those who
lived with him." [Memoirs of a Traveller now in Retirement, iv. 177.]
We also have a small book about him which you can
download below...
John Stuart, Earl of Bute (pdf)
By J A Lovat-Fraser (1912) |