Lot Essay
HENRY, 3RD DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH
Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, a great patron of literature, was born in 1746, the fourth child of Francis Scott, Earl of Dalkeith, son of Francis Scott, 2nd Duke of Buccleuch. His father died of smallpox at the age of twenty-nine, just one year before the death of his grandfather, the 2nd Duke. Henry succeeded to the dukedom at the age of four. Educated at Eton College, he then travelled abroad with Adam Smith, his tutor from 1764 to 1766. They remained lifelong friends. The Duke married Elizabeth, daughter of George, Duke of Montagu in 1767. Sir Walter Scott wrote of her in his journal, ‘she was a woman of unbounded beneficence to, and even beyond, the extent of her princely fortune. She had a masculine courage, and a great firmness in enduring affliction, which pressed on her with continued and successive blows in her later years.’