The year 1875 was marked for Bute by an incident which gratified him not a little, namely, the {121} bestowal on him by Queen Victoria of the Knighthood of the Thistle. It was characteristic of him that he did not accept this honour, as some noblemen of high rank and large possessions might easily have done, as a mere matter of course. He regarded it, on the contrary, as a recognition of the services he had endeavoured to render to education, learning, and the civic life; and he valued and appreciated it accordingly. Apart from any question of personal merit, he was gratified, as a patriotic Scot, by his admission into the most exclusive order of chivalry in the kingdom, and one which had been conferred for generations on the most eminent of his countrymen. He had held for some years the Grand Cross of two distinguished Papal Orders--those of St. Gregory and of the Holy Sepulchre; but on the occasion of his next ceremonial visit to Rome and to the Pope, it was remarked at the Vatican (where such details never pass unnoticed) that he was not wearing the Pontifical decorations, but only the insignia of the Scottish Order.[3] The loyal affection cherished by Bute for his few near relatives has already been mentioned; and it may therefore be easily imagined with what sympathetic interest he learned in the summer of 1875 that his cousin Lady Flora Hastings, elder sister of Lord Loudoun, had been received into the Catholic Church, and was in consequence being subjected to a species of domestic persecution which seems strange in these more tolerant days, but was {122} by no means uncommon fifty years ago. Bute wrote as to this to an intimate friend: _Jan._ 10, 1876. The treatment to which she has been submitted at home has naturally been extremely trying and painful to her;[4] but she has endured it with admirable patience, being reinforced and supported by the remarkable kindness of her brother. Loudoun's behaviour has indeed been considerate to a degree that can hardly be imagined, and far more so than could have been at all expected. You will understand, without my saying more, what we all feel about this. Norfolk has been kindness itself to her, and so, too, have others. An interesting sequel to the reference in the last sentence was the happy engagement concluded in 1877 between the Duke of Norfolk and Lady Flora. As first cousins respectively to the bride and bridegroom, Lord and Lady Bute were of course very specially interested in this marriage, which took place at the Oratory on November 21, 1877. "We are all occupied all day here," Bute wrote from a London hotel on November 16, "talking about the wedding next week, and some of us with other things besides talk, for there is much business to be done and settled."