It was during his second term of office that Bute conceived the project--which would probably have occurred to no one but himself--of restoring the vast ruined Cathedral of St. Andrews, or a portion of it, for the purposes of a university church. The plan might, he thought, be realised if every member of the Scottish peerage could be induced to subscribe a thousand pounds towards it. But there were at least three reasons which militated against the success of the proposal. In the first place, the pedigrees of the peers of Scotland were in most cases a great deal longer than their purses; in the second, few of them were probably much interested in university education in general, or in St. Andrews in particular; in the third, the majority of them were members of the Episcopalian body, not of the Established Church, to which the university church would as a matter of course be aggregated. It is curious that the only promise of substantial support received by the Catholic Rector towards a scheme which must, it is to be feared, be pronounced fantastic, came from a wealthy nobleman who was not a member of either the Episcopalian or the Established Church, but a devoted and almost fanatical Free Churchman. {208} Bute's academic labours and anxieties were diversified at this time by the preparation of a book in which he took great interest, on the subject of the "Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland." The study of heraldry had always had an attraction for him, although he was perhaps, in practice, sometimes more inclined to follow his own fancy than the rigid rules of that most exact of sciences. "I call Bute a sentimental rather than a scientific herald," a friend much interested in the subject once said of him; and perhaps the criticism was a just one. In any case, his curious and out-of-the-way erudition found its scope in the production of this volume, which he published in collaboration with Mr. S. R. N. Macphail and Mr. H. W. Lonsdale in 1897. A copy with plates specially coloured under Bute's supervision, and handsomely bound, was presented by the Town Council of Rothesay to Queen Victoria, who accepted it very graciously.[9]