John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, (12 September 1847 – 9 October 1900) was a Scottish landed aristocrat, industrial magnate, antiquarian, scholar, philanthropist, and architectural patron.
When Bute succeeded to the marquisate at the age of just six months, his vast inheritance reportedly made him the richest man in the world. His conversion to Catholicism from the Church of Scotland at the age of 21 scandalised Victorian society and led Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to use the Marquess as the basis for the eponymous hero of his novel Lothair, published in 1870. Marrying into one of Britain's most illustrious Catholic families, that of the Duke of Norfolk, Bute became one of the leaders of the British Catholic community. His expenditure on building and restoration made him the foremost architectural patron of the 19th century.
Lord Bute died in 1900, at the age of 53; his heart was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. He was a Knight Grand Cross of the Holy Sepulchre, Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great and Hereditary Keeper of Rothesay Castle.
Early life
The future Marquess was born at the family seat of Mount Stuart, on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, to John, 2nd Marquess of Bute, and Lady Sophia Rawdon-Hastings, daughter of The 1st Marquess of Hastings. At birth, he was known by the courtesy title Earl of Dumfries.
The 2nd Marquess was an industrialist and began, at great financial risk, the development of Cardiff as a port to export the mineral wealth of the South Wales Valleys. Accumulating major debts and mortgages on his estates, the Marquess rightly foresaw the potential of Cardiff, telling his concerned solicitor in 1844, "I am willing to think well of my income in the distance." The following fifty years saw his faith vindicated, but the ensuing riches were to be enjoyed, and spent, by his son, "the richest man in the world", rather than himself.
The 2nd Marquess died in 1848 and his son succeeded to the Marquessate when less than six months old. He was educated at Harrow School, and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1865. His mother died when he was 12. Bute had been attracted to the Roman Catholic Church since childhood, and the efforts of his guardians to weaken this attraction only added to it. He was never a member of the Church of England, despite efforts by Henry Parry Liddon to attract him to it. Bute's letters to one of his very few intimate friends during his Oxford career show with what conscientious care he worked out the religious question for himself. On 8 December 1868, he was received into the Church by Monsignor Capel at a convent in Southwark, and a little later was confirmed by Pius IX in Rome, resulting in a public scandal. His conversion was the inspiration for Benjamin Disraeli's novel, Lothair.
Interests
The Marquess's vast range of interests, which included religion, medievalism, the occult, architecture, travelling, linguistics, and philanthropy, filled his relatively short life. A prolific writer, bibliophile and traveller, as well as, somewhat reluctantly, a businessman, his energies were on a monumentally Victorian scale. "A liturgist and ecclesiologist of real distinction", he published on a wide range of topics. But at a distance, just over one hundred years from his death, it is his architectural patronage as "the greatest builder of country houses in nineteenth-century Britain" that creates his lasting memorial.
In 1865, the Marquess met William Burges and the two embarked on an architectural partnership, the results of which long outlasted Burges' own death in 1881. Bute's desires and money allied with Burges' fantastical imagination and skill led to the creation of two of the finest examples of the late Victorian era Gothic Revival, Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch. The two buildings represent both the potential of colossal industrial wealth and the desire to escape the scene of that wealth's creation. The theme recurs again and again in the huge outpouring of Bute's patronage, in chapels, castle, abbeys, universities and palaces. Bute's later buildings are hardly less remarkable than his collaborations with Burges. Robert Rowand Anderson rebuilt the Georgian Mount Stuart House for him, and Bute worked in collaboration with many of Burges's colleagues, including William Frame and Horatio Walter Lonsdale, on the interiors. John Kinross was Bute's architect for the sympathetic and creative reworking of the partially ruined Falkland Palace. Kinross also restored Greyfriars in Elgin for Bute.
As a burgess of Cardiff, the Marquess accepted the invitation to be mayor of Cardiff for the municipal year from November 1890.