1871, Belmont and Llanthony
Soon after the meeting of the Archæological Congress, Bute left England for Ober Ammergau to witness the Passion Play, which had been postponed for a year owing to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He then joined his yacht at St. Malo, and after a cruise off Devon, Cornwall, and the Channel Islands returned to Cardiff for the autumn. During this time he paid several visits to the Benedictine Priory at Belmont, near Hereford, where his liturgical tastes found satisfaction in the solemn rendering of the Divine service by the monastic community. One of the fathers then resident there[[9]] has some interesting recollections of these periodical visits:
Lord Bute came to Belmont three or four times, I think, in the year before his marriage. He left on us the impression of a modest, unassuming, and extremely intelligent young man with serious tastes, who seemed quite at home in the simple surroundings of a monastery. He frequented the Divine Office regularly, and followed all the Church functions with interest. He joined the Fathers at coffee after meals, and conversed very pleasantly, telling us sometimes of his Cardiff interests or of his early experiences and travels. He was a good deal with Prior Vaughan,[[10]] of course; but as I was acting guestmaster and about his own age, I walked out with him several times, and we talked of many subjects, chiefly, perhaps, archæological or theological topics. I remember his telling me of a conversation with a Protestant clergyman who came to interview him, possibly with hope of influencing an unformed mind. Lord Bute proposed for discussion the precise theological value of the verse on the Precious Blood[[11]]—
"Cujus una stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere;"
and I gathered that they soon came to an end of the poor parson's divinity, and of his efforts to "snatch a brand from the burning."
The prior took Lord Bute to Llanthony, where they saw "Father Ignatius," who told them that he reserved the Holy Eucharist under three rites—Anglican, Greek, and Roman. He also said (which struck Lord Bute as very whimsical) that he insisted on his visitors keeping strict silence when walking over a field in which his cloisters were one day to be built.[[12]]
[[1]] As a little boy of twelve Bute had been enrolled as an honorary member of the 1st Bute Rifle Volunteers, and had occasionally appeared in the dark-grey uniform with blue facings. When the Cardiff Yeomanry went on service in the South African War, Bute showed his patriotism by subscribing £500 to the funds of the corps.
[[2]] The kinship was undoubted, if somewhat remote. Bute was fifteenth in direct male descent from King Robert II. of Scotland, the lineal ancestor of James VIII. (the "Chevalier de St. George"), to whom the Pope made over the Palazzo Santi Apostoli as a residence in 1720, the year of the birth of Prince Charles Edward.
[[3]] The caustic comment in Vatican circles was, of course, that it was a case of the "Little Rock" in conflict with the Rock of Peter; but it should be added that the two dissentient prelates, immediately after voting against the decree, left their places and prostrated themselves before the Papal Chair in token of their submission. Similarly every one of the eighty-eight bishops who had voted "Non placet" in the Congregation of July 13—not, of course, against the dogma, but against the opportuneness of its definition—accepted the decree without qualification as soon as it was officially promulgated.
[[4]] On October 20, 1870, a month after the forcible occupation of Rome by the Piedmontese troops, Pius IX. issued a brief proroguing the Council. It has never been either closed or reassembled.