The Dukes

by Brian Masters

  As one peerage lawyer wrote, "His Grace of Hamilton has as much right to it as he has to the throne of China."

  The upshot of it all is that the present Duke of Abercorn is, whether he or anyone else likes it or not, the legal Duke of Chatelherault (1549), whereas the present Duke of Hamilton is also Duke of Chatelherault by a new Napoleonic creation of 1864. Neither of them is at all exercised by the problem.*

  Now back to the 12th Duke of Hamilton, busy accumulating as many titles as he could. Another title he claimed, with justification

  *Anyone wishing to enquire further should consult the Hamilton Papers at the Scottish National Register of Archives.

  this time, and with success, was the even more complex earldom of Selkirk. It is worth looking at, because it must be unique in the entire peerage.

  The 1st Earl of Selkirk was William Douglas, the man who mar­ried Anne, Duchess of Hamilton in her own right and was later created Duke of Hamilton himself, for his lifetime only. (Incidentally, this marriage united the Douglas and Hamilton lines that we find reflected in the family surname.) He had been Earl of Selkirk in 1646, and Duke of Hamilton in 1660. On receiving the dukedom, he resigned his earldom, surrendering it to the King's hands to do with as His Majesty pleased. In fact, by surrendering a dignity to the King, you give back what was only yours during the monarch's pleasure, the monarch being the source and fountain of all peerage dignities. So the King assumed the earldom of Selkirk himself for a period. However, there was always the tacit understanding that it should be reconferred, with a fresh patent, on the Duke's family, but with a unique remainder. It was stipulated that this title should belong to the third son of the Duke of Hamilton and his heirs male and that, if the line failed, and if the lines of any younger sons should fail, the title should revert to the Duke of Hamilton of the day until such time as he had a younger son to start a new line of earls of Selkirk. As long as the Duke of Hamilton had one son, the earldom would be absorbed into his subsidiary titles; but it would re-emerge as a title in its own right (not a courtesy title) when there was a cadet branch of the family to assume it. Accordingly the title was conferred upon the third son of the 1st Duke in 1688, and remained with his descendants until 1886, when their line came to an end and it was claimed by the 12th Duke of Hamilton. It remained with the dukedom until the death of the 13th Duke in 1940, whereupon his dukedom and subsidiary titles passed to his eldest son, while the independent earldom of Selkirk went to his second son, Group Captain Lord Nigel Douglas-Hamilton (who was on active service at the time and did not claim his title until after the war). He, then, is the 7th and present Earl of Selkirk, and his son, born in 1939, is the Master of Selkirk; a new line of earls has begun, to exist in divergence from the senior line of Hamiltons.

  His brother, 14th Duke of Hamilton (1903-1973) was also a group captain in the war, and a distinguished pilot. In 1933 he made history as chief pilot of the Houston Everest Expedition by being the first man ever to fly over the top of Mount Everest; he cleared it by barely 100 feet. From that moment he was a national hero. Later, he was President of the British Airline Pilots' Association, and started a flying school at Prestwick which developed under his care into a world-famous airport; he was chairman of Scottish Aviation Ltd, which founded and owned the airport until its international status made it too busy to handle privately.

  There were many facets of the Duke's character which would make him more interesting than most of his ancestors even without the headlines created by Rudolph Hess in the war. The 14th Duke was consciously at variance with his forbears' pompous inflexible Toryism. At Oxford he was captain of the University Boxing Team, and accounted the best amateur boxer of his year, a distinction which would have appalled the nineteenth-century Hamiltons, if, that is, they would have believed it. Worse still, he worked incognito at the coal face in one of the family mines, as "Mr Hamilton", and carried a trade-union card. He was probably the first Duke of Hamilton to be even distantly aware of working-class life, certainly the only one to experience it at first hand. Slightly younger than he, but still of the same generation and shaped by the same upheavals in aristocratic life in the first quarter of the century, is the present Duke of Richmond, who has worked on the factory floor.

  The 14th Duke was also a Member of Parliament for ten years before he inherited in 1940, and Lord Steward of the Royal House­hold. He never smoked, and never drank. If his name springs to mind in the post-war era, it is not as a boxer, or pilot, or a coal-miner, but as the embarrassed central character in the Rudolph Hess drama of 1941.In May 1941 a German parachutist calling himself Oberleutnant Alfred Horn landed on the Duke of Hamilton's estate in Scotland, having made a hazardous solo flight over enemy territory. When brought before the Duke, he made the astonishing claim to be in reality Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy, and to be engaged on a peace mission. He pointed out to the Duke that Germany did not wish to continue the war with England, preferring rather to conserve her forces the better to smash Russia, and would welcome the opportu­nity to initiate peace negotiations. The central condition which Hitler would make was that England should abandon her traditional position of always opposing the strongest power in Europe. Hess was clearly under the impression that England had been cowed by the blitz, and that the real power in the country was the handful of German sympathisers in the Conservative Party. Why had the Duke of Hamilton been selected to receive this explosive guest? Hess had discussed the possibility of peace overtures with one Albrecht Haushofer, who was known to the Duke, and Haushofer had suggested that Hamilton might be the man to approach, as he had the ear of everyone who mattered in England, including Churchill and the King. There was the tacit implication that he might be receptive to the idea.

  The Duke always claimed that he had never met Hess. He had been present at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1936, and might have been seen by Hess there, and he remembered having mentioned to Haushofer that he would like to meet him. On the other hand, there was another Hamilton, Sir Ian, who was well known in Ger­many, and who had met Hess several times; he also had been mentioned as a possible contact by Haushofer. It now looks very likely that the deputy Fuehrer chose the wrong Hamilton.

  The Duke flew straight to London to report to Churchill, who looked at him as if he were mad. "Do you mean to tell me that the Deputy Fuehrer of Germany is in our hands?" he said. Nevertheless, Churchill would not disrupt his plan to watch a Marx Brothers film.

  Meanwhile, on the German side, Hitler was bursting with rage. He had previously not been consulted. Rudolph Hess, whose influence with Hitler had been waning, had made a desperate attempt to curry favour, and misread the Fuehrer's view of independent initiative as well as of the mood in England. With historical perspective, one now sees that the Hess episode was an insignificant interruption in the course of the war. Hess was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and sentenced to imprisonment for life at the Nuremberg trials. He languished in Spandau prison, a pathetic, not very intelligent, lonely old man, until his death in 1987. In view of the intent behind his flight - to make peace with England and concentrate on over­coming Russia - it is little wonder that the Russians insisted he should stay in prison literally until he died. As for the Duke of Hamilton, he was an unwilling participant in a bizarre affair, but by virtue of having been chosen by Hess, has been accorded a footnote in the history of the war which he would rather forgo. His own service in the war, as group captain in the Royal Air Force, is more deserving of recollection.

  The map which Hess used to guide him over Scotland, with his own arrow marks on it, hangs on the wall in the family home.

  The Duke died in 1973, and was succeeded by his son as 15th Duke of Hamilton (born 1938). He is the Premier Peer of Scotland, and Hereditary Keeper of Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh, the Queen's official residence; the position entitles him to a suite of rooms to be kept always at his disposal in the Palace. His mother is sister to the present Duke of Northumberland. In 1972 he married Sarah, daughter of Sir Walter Scott. />
  Like his father, he was in the Royal Air Force, and before inherit­ing the titles was employed as a test pilot by Scottish Aviation. He is one of the versatile, buccaneer, sporting dukes, as opposed to politi­cal dukes like Devonshire or businessmen like St Albans. It is not without significance that his ancestor, the first Hamilton to be raised to the peerage as Earl of Arran, was so rewarded for being an excellent jouster. Hamilton is an accomplished sportsman in many fields, including motor-racing and skin-diving. He frankly admits that he would have much rather gone on being a test pilot, which he enjoyed, than becoming a ducal landowner. He has had to learn a great deal about estate management and farming. The estates are now run by a limited company, of which he is chairman, and which has such a fine record of efficiency that it actually farms more acres than it owns: the arrangement is a complicated one.

  The Duke and Duchess live in a house in East Lothian, while the estate office is at the official ducal seat, Lennoxlove, at Haddington, owned by the limited company and rented by it to the Dowager Duchess. Lennoxlove was named after the Duchess of Lennox and Richmond, better known as "la Belle Stuart", one of Charles II's mistresses and the model for Britannia on our coins. But it has been with dukes of Hamilton for less than thirty years. The original seat was the magnificent Hamilton Palce, demolished in 1922 in what the present Duke calls "one of the architectual crimes of the century". The estate in those days was run by a board of trustees, one of whom was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They gave the worst possible advice to the crippled 13th Duke, telling him that the Palace would have to be destroyed (a) because of the danger of subsidence due to mine-workings beneath, (b) because it was difficult to drain efficiently, (c) because the country needed coal, and the Palace was sitting on it. Patriotic fervour more than anything impelled the Duke to get rid of one of the best houses in the country - the Great War had ended four years before and emotions were still running high. He took his seventeen-year-old son (the present Duke's father) to have a last look at the place, and told him he could choose one single object from amongst the treasures to keep for himself, before they all disappeared. He chose a mirror, which is still in the family. They also managed to save family portraits, and the death-mask of Mary Queen of Scots, now at Lennoxlove.

  The mausoleum in which the twelve Dukes of Hamilton lay stood in the grounds of Hamilton Palace. When the Palace was demolished, the mausoleum was left, but the bodies were removed and interred. The grounds now belong to Strathclyde Park.

  The present Duke has had the idea of digging up the Egyptian sarcophagus, and placing it on show in the mausoleum. It would lend greater interest to the mausoleum, and apart from anything else, it is an extremely rare and beautiful object.

  Strathclyde Park was prepared to accept the sarcophagus as a gift, but could not afford to buy it. It is now worth anything up to £1 million, so rare an object it is. The Duke agreed. He has now been advised by his lawyers that once the coffin is dug up, it becomes an asset, and the Duke may have to pay heavy wealth tax every year he keeps it; if he gives it away he will pay Capital Transfer Tax; if he sells it, he will pay Capital Transfer Tax and Capital Gains Tax. All things considered, it is better to leave the old Duke where he lies.

  * * *

  Now to the House of Hamilton in Ireland. Lord Arran's second surviving son, Claud Lord Paisley, went mad. His son was created Earl of Abercorn in 1606, taking the title from land he held in Linlithgow. At the same time he was granted lands in County Tyrone, Ireland, and it was there that the family seat — Baron's Court — was built. His descendant was made Duke of Abercorn by Queen Victoria in 1868, but first, there are a pair of Georgian eccentrics to divert us.

  The 8th Earl of Abercorn (1712-1789) never married, leaving himself free to indulge and aggravate that stony aloof fastidious nature which becomes obsessive with so many bachelors. Join to this a fair share of that Hamilton pride, and you have a crotchety, stiff and unsociable man. He is said to have made the tour of Europe in so perpendicular a style as never to have touched the back of his carriage.18 He once received the Queen at his house, whereupon the King thanked him, saying that he was afraid Her Majesty's visit had given him a good deal of trouble. "A good deal indeed," replied Lord Abercom.

  He was highly offended if anyone should presume to pay him a visit without the formality of a card of invitation. This was an English habit, but not usual in Scotland, where it was assumed that a nobleman's house always had a welcome for callers. (The 5th Duke of Buccleuch played host at Drumlanrig to dozens of people whom he had never met.) The Earl of Abercorn was on a visit to his Scottish estate when a local historian called Robertson who, poor man, was unaware of the Earl's reputation for stiffness, called to pay his respects. He found Lord Abercorn by the shrubbery in the garden, went up to him, and commented on how well the shrubs had grown since his lordship's last visit. "They have nothing else to do," replied Abercorn, and walked away.

  In fairness, it is also recorded that Lord Abercorn was kind to those around him, is long as they respected his exalted rank. Even he was surpassed in pomposity by his successor, his nephew, born Mr Hamil­ton but successively Earl and Marquess of Abercorn (1756-1818). While it may be said that the old Earl was prickly, the new Marquess was positively pretentious. Born a commoner, he grew into the most inflexible aristocrat, with a menacing, overpowering personality; even the King went in fear of him. He dined every day wearing the Blue Ribbon of the Knight of the Garter; he even hunted in it. The maids were not allowed to change the linen on his august bed unless they wore white kid gloves; more personal contact would be degrading to his rank. Footmen were required to dip their hands in a bowl of rose-water before handing him a dish. He travelled always with four carriages and ten outriders, and if he gave a party, it was not for a weekend, nor a week, but for an entire month. The moment any person became famous, he had to be invited to the Marquess of Abercorn's. The boy actor, Master Betty, was a frequent guest. Also, anyone who was beautiful (or known to be so) would receive an invitation. The guests could do as they wished, on the understanding that they were not to address Lord Abercorn except at table. Few would ever dare to open their mouths even there. When a very poor novel called Thaddeus of Warsaw by the young Jane Porter became the success of the moment, Abercorn said, "Gad! We must have these Porters. Write, my dear Lady Abercorn." (Jane had a novelist sister, Anna Maria Porter.) She wrote, and Jane replied that she could not afford the fa're. A cheque was sent. They duly arrived, and the Marquess peered at them from behind a curtain. He was disap­pointed ; they were not as good-looking as he had been led to believe. "Witches, my lady," he said, and disappeared, leaving Lady Aber­corn to entertain them; they did not see him.19

  Such peculiar conduct did not endear Abercorn to his contem­poraries, who thought him a rather ridiculous figure, self-consciously grand, and vacuous at the centre. He was variously known as il magnifico (a sobriquet passed on to his kinsman, the 10th Duke of Hamilton), or Don Whiskerandos because he looked Spanish. There was no doubting that he was a marquess; he worked hard at the role. "An air of grace and dignity diffused over his whole person", says Wraxall, "he could not be mistaken for an ordinary man."20 Pride informed his every remark. Even before he inherited the earldom, when he was plain Mr Hamilton, he had visiting cards which proclaimed him "D'Hamilton, Comte Hereditaire d'Aber- corn".21 Once clothed with the accoutrements of nobility, he simply could not be restrained. Someone remarked upon the livery worn by his servants, which was identical to that worn by those serving younger members of the Royal Family, saying, "I suppose your family took it from them." The temerity! Abercorn raised his chin. "Sir," he said, "it was the livery of the Hamiltons before the House of Brunswick had a servant to put it on."22 Lady Holland could scarcely believe her ears. She wrote: "He was always supposed to be a little cracked, and his pride is beyond belief."

  Abercom did nothing with his life. Politics bored him. He devoted his time to acting the part of a grandee, and entertaining the famous and the be
autiful. It comes as a surprise, therefore, to see honours heaped upon him, first a marquessate, then the Garter, then a Privy Councillor, without any obvious merit. The answer is to be found in his friendship with the Prime Minister, Pitt, whom he had known when they were young men at Cambridge, and from whose acquain­tance he now profited as much as he could. Pitt, it was even sug­gested, profited also; he was paid for persuading the King to look upon Abercorn with favour. This is how Wraxall tactfully puts it: "no honours or concession in the power of the Crown to bestow were above the pretensions of a man, who not only descended from the royal line of Scottish kings, but was himself the head and representa­tive of the Dukes of Hamilton in male succession. . . . When, how­ever, as a further augmentation to so many dignities and distinctions conferred on this nobleman, the Garter was finally added by Pitt some years later, there were not wanting individuals who sought for the solution of such extraordinary acts of predilection or friendship by recourse to more concealed causes."23 Wraxall goes on to point out that Abercorn was wealthy and Pitt so poor that he could not pay his taxes or the butcher when he came to the door, and hints darkly that the Prime Minister received £1000 from Abercorn's purse.