John Patrick, third Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, Mountjoy and Dumfries, holder of nine other titles in the peerages of Great Britain and of Scotland, and a baronet of Nova Scotia, was fifteenth in descent from Robert II., King of Scotland, who, towards the end of the fourteenth century, created his son John Stuart, or Steuart, hereditary sheriff of the newly-erected county of Bute, Arran and Cumbrae, making to him at the same time a grant of land in those islands. His lineal descendant, the sixth sheriff of Bute, who adhered faithfully to the monarchy in the Civil Wars, and suffered considerably in the royal cause, was created a baronet in 1627; and his grandson, a stalwart opponent of the union of Scotland with England, was raised to the peerage of Scotland as Earl of Bute, with several subsidiary titles, in 1702. Lord Bute's grandson, the third earl, was the well-known Tory minister and favourite of the young king, George III., and his mother--a faithful servant of his sovereign, a man of culture and refinement, admirable as husband, father, and friend, and withal, by the irony of fate, unquestionably the most unpopular prime minister {2} who ever held office in England. His heir and successor made a great match, marrying in 1766 the eldest daughter and co-heiress of the second and last Viscount Windsor; and thirty years later he was created Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, and Viscount Mount joy. Lord Mountstuart, his heir, who predeceased his father, married Penelope, only surviving child and heiress of the fifth Earl of Dumfries and Stair; and the former of those titles devolved on his son, together with valuable estates in Ayrshire. The second marquess, who succeeded to the family honours the year before Waterloo, when he was just of age (he had already travelled extensively, and had paid a visit to Napoleon at Elba), earned the reputation of being one of the most enlightened and public-spirited noblemen of his generation. During the thirty-four years that he owned and controlled the vast family estates in Wales and Scotland, he devoted his whole energies to their improvement, and to promoting the welfare of his tenantry and dependents. His practical interest in agriculture was evinced by the fact that the arable land on his Buteshire property was trebled during his tenure of it; and foreseeing with remarkable prescience the great future in store for the port and docks of Cardiff, he spared neither labour nor means in their development. He was Lord-Lieutenant both of Glamorgan and of Bute, and discharged with tact and success the office of Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland in 1842, on the eve of the ecclesiastical crisis which ended in the secession of more than 400 ministers of the Establishment. His political opinions were in the best sense liberal, and he was a consistent advocate of Catholic Emancipation, even when that {3} measure was opposed by the Duke of Wellington, whom he generally supported.