Duke of Buccleuch

A carte-de-visite portrait of the British politician and nobleman Walter Francis Montagu-Douglas-Scott (1806-1884), 5th Duke of Buccleuch [pronounced be’clew] and 7th Duke of Queensbury. The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury was one of only five aristocrats to hold two or more different dukedoms, the others being the Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, the Duke of Argyll (who holds two dukedoms named Argyll) and the Duke of Richmond, Lennox and Gordon.

Educated at Eton and St John’s College, Cambridge, on 13 August 1829 he married Lady Charlotte Thynne, daughter of the Marquess of Bath. King George IV was sponsor for, and attended the christening, of their son, William Henry Walter, later the 6th Duke. In 1822 the King spent some days as the Duke’s guest at Dalkeith Palace, the first visit of a reigning Hanoverian monarch to Scotland. Twenty years later, Queen Victoria also honoured him with a visit.

A great Scottish landed magnate, in politics the Duke was a Conservative. He served as Lord Privy Seal and Lord President in Peel’s government in the 1840s, when he reluctantly supported Peel’s decision respecting the repeal of the Corn Laws. After Peel’s fall, Buccleuch’s political career largely came to an end. He died on 16 April 1884.

Photographed by William and Daniel Downey of London and Newcastle.