John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 10

The prior took Lord Bute to Llanthony, where they saw "Father Ignatius," who told them that he reserved the Holy Eucharist under three rites--Anglican, Greek, and Roman. He also said (which struck Lord Bute as very whimsical) that he insisted on his visitors keeping strict silence when walking over a field in which his cloisters were one day to be built.[12]

[1] As a little boy of twelve Bute had been enrolled as an honorary member of the 1st Bute Rifle Volunteers, and had occasionally appeared in the dark-grey uniform with blue facings. When the Cardiff Yeomanry went on service in the South African War, Bute showed his patriotism by subscribing 500 to the funds of the corps.

[2] The kins.h.i.+p was undoubted, if somewhat remote. Bute was fifteenth in direct male descent from King Robert II. of Scotland, the lineal ancestor of James VIII. (the "Chevalier de St. George"), to whom the Pope made over the Palazzo Santi Apostoli as a residence in 1720, the year of the birth of Prince Charles Edward.

[3] The caustic comment in Vatican circles was, of course, that it was a case of the "Little Rock" in conflict with the Rock of Peter; but it should be added that the two dissentient prelates, immediately after voting against the decree, left their places and prostrated themselves before the Papal Chair in token of their submission. Similarly every one of the eighty-eight bishops who had voted "Non placet" in the Congregation of July 13--not, of course, against the dogma, but against the opportuneness of its definition--accepted the decree without qualification as soon as it was officially promulgated.

[4] On October 20, 1870, a month after the forcible occupation of Rome by the Piedmontese troops, Pius IX. issued a brief proroguing the Council. It has never been either closed or rea.s.sembled.

[5] Fr. Herbert Thurston, S.J., in a learned article in _The Month_ (October, 1911), has shown that the custom of offering a "purification"

of unconsecrated wine and water to lay communicants, after their reception of the Host, was practically universal in England down to the period of the Reformation, and was continued until the reign of James II. The practice is still generally observed at Ordination Ma.s.ses, and on one or two other rare and special occasions.

[6] The learned and eloquent Professor of Exegesis had been appointed a canon of St. Paul's by Mr. Gladstone in the spring of this year, and had preached his first sermon under the dome as canon-in-residence on September 11, four days before the above letter was written.

[7] Father George Smith, who had studied at St. Sulpice, and was an excellent scholar and theologian, became Bishop of Argyll and the Isles in 1893, occupying the see for a quarter of a century until his death in 1918.

[8] Long after the termination of his political connection with Bute, Sir Charles Dalrymple used to recall with pleasure the remark once made to him on Rothesay Pier by a Butes.h.i.+re farmer of the old school: "Weel, sir, we've got three things to be thankful for in the Isle of Bute, and forbye they all begin with an M: we've a gude mairquis, and a gude member, and a gude meenister."

[9] Right Rev. J. I. c.u.mmins, O.S.B., now (1920) t.i.tular Abbot of St.

Mary's, York.

[10] This was Dom Roger Bede Vaughan, younger brother of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan of Westminster. He was cathedral prior of Belmont from 1862 to 1872, and in 1877 became Archbishop of Sydney, N.S.W. He died in 1883.

[11] From the Eucharistic hymn _Adoro Te devoie_, written by St. Thomas of Aquin about A.D. 1260, and known as the "Rhythmus S. Thomae Aquinatis." Sixteen English versions of it have been published at various times.

[12] The Rev. J. Leycester Lyne--commonly known as "Father Ignatius"--was at this time endeavouring, with no great success, to establish an Anglican Benedictine monastery among the Black Mountains of Wales. About a year previous to Bute's visit he had laid the foundation of the conventual buildings.

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CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE--HOME AND FAMILY LIFE--VISIT TO MAJORCA

1871-1874

Included in Bute's great inheritance were a considerable number of advowsons, carrying the right of presentation to livings in the Established Church. Nearly a dozen of these benefices were in Glamorgan, two (St. Mary's and Roath) being within the town of Cardiff.

Bute was, of course, from the time of his conversion to the Roman Church, legally disabled from the exercise of his right of patronage in regard to these livings; but instead of allowing them to "lapse" (as the technical phrase is[1]) he from time to time made over the next presentations to two _quasi_-trustees, friends of his own, and members, of course, of the Church of England. One of these "trustees" was for a time Canon John David Jenkins, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, with whom Bute had become intimate during his university career. Dr.

Jenkins became vicar of Aberdare, one of the Bute livings, in 1870, and we find Bute writing to an Oxford friend about a year later:

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Canon Jenkins has just appointed the Revs. Puller[2] and Stuart to two out of the three parishes here; and Puller, at any rate, will be inducted in Ember week.

[Sidenote: 1871, Church Patronage in Wales]

The practice adopted by Bute with regard to the livings in his gift--a practice probably unique among Roman Catholic patrons, and one which, in the case of a man less conscientious and honourable than himself, might have been open to obvious objections--was not continued by his successor after his death; nor, indeed, could it have been, after the a.s.signment of next presentations ceased to be legally permissible. The ten family livings in the county of Glamorgan fell accordingly, as provided by the statute, to the gift of the University of Cambridge.[3]

The advowsons of other livings, in Monmouths.h.i.+re and Northumberland, were sold in Bute's lifetime or by his successor.

The friends.h.i.+p between Canon Jenkins and Bute was maintained until the death of the former in 1876[4]; and he was one among the little group of learned men--scholars, antiquarians, and ecclesiastics--much senior in age to the young Scottish peer, whom he gathered round him at this time, and often invited to share the solitude of his Welsh {104} castle or his island home in Scotland. That it was something of a solitude, and that he felt it to be so there are many indications in his letters at this period. His only intimate friend of his own age was his old schoolfellow George Sneyd, with whose views on many subjects, sincere as was his affection for him, he was (as has been seen) in some respects entirely out of sympathy. What he was longing for and looking forward to, as he found himself approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, was domestic happiness and the home life of which he had known so little since his early boyhood; and this, as was natural, he hoped to secure by an early and happy marriage.

In the summer of 1871 his name was connected by the rumour, or gossip, of the day with that of the charming ward of a well-known Catholic peeress, whose hospitality had often been extended to him on the occasions of his visits to London. Bute took the opportunity, when writing to an old friend on whose sympathy he could rely, to deny categorically the truth of the rumour in question, and at the same time to give expression with his usual frankness to the feelings of dissatisfaction and discontent with which he was entering on his twenty-fifth year.

Cardiff Castle, _July_ 29, 1871.

MY DEAR MISS SKENE,

As there is, I fear, little chance of my being in Oxford just now, I will not delay longer in replying to your kind letter.

I had not seen the reports to which you refer, although I knew that they had been circulated by the scandalmongers of the press. I may tell you at {105} once--I had meant to do so before--that there is no truth in them whatever. There is no engagement between Miss ---- and myself, and nothing is less likely than that there ever should be. I will tell you all about it some day when I see you, or in a future letter: I cannot write more about it at present, except to say that here I am thrown out on the world again, feeling very lonely and desolate. My future, indeed, looks pretty blank just now, as you may imagine easily enough. There is nothing for it but to go on one's way, trying to do one's duty--and literature. I have also a considerable taste for art and archaeology, and happily the means to indulge them.

When I return from Ober Ammergau, whither I go next month, to see the Pa.s.sion Play, I shall do a little yachting in home waters, and then return here for the autumn and winter. There is plenty to do here, of course; and building, archaeology, and writing will perhaps help me to forget my troubles. After Christmas this place will be unbearable, and I think I shall go to Bute.

Yours ever very sincerely, BUTE.

[Sidenote: 1872, Engagement and Marriage]

Whatever may have been the disappointment or mortification occasioned to Bute by the episode in his life referred to in the above letter, they were amply compensated for, and indeed wholly forgotten, in the happiness of the event which he was able to announce to his friends at the close of this year. This was his engagement to the Hon. Gwendoline FitzAlan Howard, eldest daughter of the first Lord Howard of Glossop by his first wife. The marriage took place at the Oratory Church on April 16, 1872, Archbishop Manning officiating, a.s.sisted by five Oratorian fathers. Bute's cousin, Lord Mauchline (afterwards Earl of Loudoun), {106} wearing Highland dress, was the best man, the princ.i.p.al bridesmaid being the Hon. Alice Howard of Glossop, who married Lord Loudoun in 1880. Mgr. Capel said the Nuptial Ma.s.s and preached the sermon; and the register was signed by the Duke of Cambridge, the Dukes of Northumberland and Argyll, and Mr. Disraeli. The wedding aroused an extraordinary amount of popular interest and even excitement; and the _Spectator_ commented with satiric surprise on the fact that the London newspapers devoted entire pages to describing the ceremony, which actually occupied--but that perhaps was less astonis.h.i.+ng--thirty columns of the Cardiff _Western Mail_. How distasteful this public excitement was to the chief actors in the ceremony may be gathered from a letter written by Bute to a friend in Rome a fortnight later:

Cardiff Castle, _April_ 29, 1872.

The whole thing went off very well; the religious part of it, which most concerned us, was very well done, and, I hear, pleased and impressed the many Protestants who were present. I suppose you will have seen descriptions and pictures of it. You will understand that to the princ.i.p.als the whole thing--I mean the secular part of it--was absolutely detestable. As Lord Beauchamp says: "There is only one thing more disagreeable than being married in London, and that is being married in the country." Of course we have been extremely quiet ever since, and expect to be so. My Lady is the last person in the world to "rout one out" and want to make a flare-up and a splash.

The Pope sent presents to us both,[5] and I wrote to Mgr. Howard to express our grat.i.tude, enclosing {107} a letter of thanks in very indifferent Latin, which I composed and we both signed; but it was not to be given if it was contrary to etiquette.

I find it the custom of Protestants, when they are married by an Archbishop, to present that dignitary with a pair of gloves--theirs being always white kid sewn with gold. I think I shall have a pair of cloth-of-gold _chirothecae_ made for Abp. Manning, and shall get Burges to design them. I know the Roman ones are often made of spun silk, but you can have them of other stuff, too, can you not?

A relique of St. Margaret of Scotland has been got for me, and I think of having a bust made for it, of silver-gilt; but I have not yet received it and don't know what it is like. I think also of sending to Chur (Choire) for a relique of St. Lucius of Glamorgan (Lleurwg Mawr).[6] _A propos_ of Reliques, they have been making wonderful discoveries of the shrine of St. Alban in his abbey.[7]

[Sidenote: 1872, Reception at Cardiff]

Lord and Lady Bute had gone immediately after their marriage to Cardiff, where they received a very cordial welcome, the mayor reading an address to them at the Castle gates. "I a.s.sure you," said Bute in his brief reply, "that my wife comes here to-day with a sincere desire to do what is right, and to be of service not to me only, but to all by whom {108} she is surrounded, and among whom her life is to be henceforth spent." It is sufficient to say here that Bute's antic.i.p.ations of the new happiness that this step would bring into his life were more than justified by the event. "I cannot but thank G.o.d, and congratulate myself, on this marriage," he wrote in May, 1872; "and I hope and believe that it will bring me many blessings." A little later he wrote to the same friend:

I have done two good things (besides some foolish ones) since my twenty-first birthday; the first on December 8, 1868, when I was reconciled to the Catholic Church; the second on April 16, 1872, when the same Church blessed my happy marriage. It is a satisfaction to feel that twice in one's life, at any rate, one has done what one is certain never to repent of nor to regret. Do you not agree with me?

Bute's marriage brought him into intimate relations, and indeed some degree of kins.h.i.+p, with some of the ancient Catholic families of England, of whom he had up to that time known very little. Profoundly interested as he always was in every phase of religious belief and practice, he welcomed the opportunity now afforded him of witnessing a traditionally religious life as unostentatious as it was obviously sincere, and contrasting alike with the austere Puritanism of his childish days and the fussy restlessness which was the chief characteristic of the earlier adherents of the advanced school of Anglicanism. Writing of some Catholics of the old school, to whose country home he and his wife had been paying a visit, he says:

They have edifying habits of piety, but of a very Low Church type--the school of "Hymns Antient {109} and Modern without the Appendix," red baize boxes in galleries, family prayers and daily Ma.s.s in the most unadorned of private chapels, and an absolute minimum of ritual. You will understand that the una.s.suming simplicity of it all appeals to a person like me--especially when I see the goodness that accompanies it.