John Crichton-Stuart Bute and Adoption

ca 1890
Source: Wikipedia.org.

Biography

1847-1900

British scholar and patron of the arts

The third Marquis of Bute succeeded to the title when he was a baby - his father died in 1848, leaving him the third richest person in Europe (later, as an adult, he was described as the richest man in the world) - and his mother died in 1859. He was sent to Harrow, where he won prizes for English and Latin verse, and then to Christ Church College, Oxford.

He was famous as a scholar, restorer of ancient buildings (including Cardiff Castle, Castell Coch, Rothesay Castle, Falkland Castle, Old Place Mochrum, Chrichton Peel Sanquhar, St. Andrews Priory and Pluscarden Priory), liturgical historian, linguist, traveler and philanthropist. He was mayor of Cardiff and provost of Rothesay, lord lieutenant of Bute, president of the University of Wales Cardiff, rector of St. Andrews University and benefactor of St. Andrews and Glasgow universities, among others. He was a convert to Catholicism, and was the model for the central character in Disraeli's novel Lothair.

References

Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940. (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1959) Dictionary of National Biography Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales, edited by Meic Stephens. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)