CHAPTER VI
MARRIAGE—HOME AND FAMILY LIFE—VISIT TO MAJORCA
1871-1874
Included in Bute's great inheritance were a considerable number of advowsons, carrying the right of presentation to livings in the Established Church. Nearly a dozen of these benefices were in Glamorgan, two (St. Mary's and Roath) being within the town of Cardiff. Bute was, of course, from the time of his conversion to the Roman Church, legally disabled from the exercise of his right of patronage in regard to these livings; but instead of allowing them to "lapse" (as the technical phrase is[[1]]) he from time to time made over the next presentations to two quasi-trustees, friends of his own, and members, of course, of the Church of England. One of these "trustees" was for a time Canon John David Jenkins, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, with whom Bute had become intimate during his university career. Dr. Jenkins became vicar of Aberdare, one of the Bute livings, in 1870, and we find Bute writing to an Oxford friend about a year later:
Canon Jenkins has just appointed the Revs. Puller[[2]] and Stuart to two out of the three parishes here; and Puller, at any rate, will be inducted in Ember week.
1871, Church Patronage in Wales
The practice adopted by Bute with regard to the livings in his gift—a practice probably unique among Roman Catholic patrons, and one which, in the case of a man less conscientious and honourable than himself, might have been open to obvious objections—was not continued by his successor after his death; nor, indeed, could it have been, after the assignment of next presentations ceased to be legally permissible. The ten family livings in the county of Glamorgan fell accordingly, as provided by the statute, to the gift of the University of Cambridge.[[3]] The advowsons of other livings, in Monmouthshire and Northumberland, were sold in Bute's lifetime or by his successor.
The friendship between Canon Jenkins and Bute was maintained until the death of the former in 1876[[4]]; and he was one among the little group of learned men—scholars, antiquarians, and ecclesiastics—much senior in age to the young Scottish peer, whom he gathered round him at this time, and often invited to share the solitude of his Welsh castle or his island home in Scotland. That it was something of a solitude, and that he felt it to be so there are many indications in his letters at this period. His only intimate friend of his own age was his old schoolfellow George Sneyd, with whose views on many subjects, sincere as was his affection for him, he was (as has been seen) in some respects entirely out of sympathy. What he was longing for and looking forward to, as he found himself approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, was domestic happiness and the home life of which he had known so little since his early boyhood; and this, as was natural, he hoped to secure by an early and happy marriage.
In the summer of 1871 his name was connected by the rumour, or gossip, of the day with that of the charming ward of a well-known Catholic peeress, whose hospitality had often been extended to him on the occasions of his visits to London. Bute took the opportunity, when writing to an old friend on whose sympathy he could rely, to deny categorically the truth of the rumour in question, and at the same time to give expression with his usual frankness to the feelings of dissatisfaction and discontent with which he was entering on his twenty-fifth year.