No one of the many congratulatory letters received by Bute on his re-election gave him more sincere pleasure than the following, written by a member of the students' committee:
The 120 who won the election were the resident students of the university—those who, without distinction of sect or political partisanship, were most touched with the spirit and traditions of the place. We feel sure that you look on this circumstance as having a value far above the mere figures of the majority.
1896, A scheme that failed
It was during his second term of office that Bute conceived the project—which would probably have occurred to no one but himself—of restoring the vast ruined Cathedral of St. Andrews, or a portion of it, for the purposes of a university church. The plan might, he thought, be realised if every member of the Scottish peerage could be induced to subscribe a thousand pounds towards it. But there were at least three reasons which militated against the success of the proposal. In the first place, the pedigrees of the peers of Scotland were in most cases a great deal longer than their purses; in the second, few of them were probably much interested in university education in general, or in St. Andrews in particular; in the third, the majority of them were members of the Episcopalian body, not of the Established Church, to which the university church would as a matter of course be aggregated. It is curious that the only promise of substantial support received by the Catholic Rector towards a scheme which must, it is to be feared, be pronounced fantastic, came from a wealthy nobleman who was not a member of either the Episcopalian or the Established Church, but a devoted and almost fanatical Free Churchman.
Bute's academic labours and anxieties were diversified at this time by the preparation of a book in which he took great interest, on the subject of the "Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland." The study of heraldry had always had an attraction for him, although he was perhaps, in practice, sometimes more inclined to follow his own fancy than the rigid rules of that most exact of sciences. "I call Bute a sentimental rather than a scientific herald," a friend much interested in the subject once said of him; and perhaps the criticism was a just one. In any case, his curious and out-of-the-way erudition found its scope in the production of this volume, which he published in collaboration with Mr. S. R. N. Macphail and Mr. H. W. Lonsdale in 1897. A copy with plates specially coloured under Bute's supervision, and handsomely bound, was presented by the Town Council of Rothesay to Queen Victoria, who accepted it very graciously.[[9]]
An acquisition which Bute was able to make at the beginning of 1896, and which gave him great satisfaction, appealing as it did to his intense veneration for the religious monuments of the past, was that of the ancient friary and chapel of the Greyfriars in Elgin. He restored the chapel in its original Franciscan simplicity, and made it over for the use of the Sisters of Mercy, already established in Elgin. The ancient stone tabernacle or sacrament-house, detached from the altar, was still preserved in the chapel; and a long letter from the Bishop of Aberdeen (then in Rome), among Bute's papers, shows that the latter was engaged in the difficult task of trying to induce the Sacred Congregation of Rites to derogate from modern rules and practice, and to allow this interesting relic of the past to be again used for the purpose for which it had been originally intended.[[10]] Writing to the Provost of Elgin, in acknowledgment of a presentation made to him by the contractors and clerk of works employed at Greyfriars, Bute said with his usual felicity of expression:
My purchase was one on which I must congratulate myself, not only because in interest it has exceeded my expectation, but because it has enabled me to be of some service to Elgin by preserving an historical monument of considerable value to the town and district.
1896, Elected Provost of Rothesay
Bute had several years before this been solicited to allow himself to be nominated to the provostship of the Royal Burgh of Rothesay. He had not seen his way at that time to accept the offer, but when it was renewed in the autumn of 1896, he signified his willingness to undertake the office, and he was unanimously elected on November 6, 1896. It was a source of legitimate pride to him to be called to the chief magistracy of the ancient burgh with which his family had been associated for five hundred years, and in which five of his lineal ancestors had held the office of provost.[[11]] He applied himself to the duties of the position with his habitual assiduity and care, not infrequently travelling long distances to attend the meetings of the corporation, and presiding at them with a combined dignity and aptitude for business which favourably impressed all with whom he was brought into contact. He only once took the chair in the police-court, sensibly leaving that department, as he had done at Cardiff, to the charge of those better versed in police administration than himself; nor, as it happened, was he qualified to preside at licensing-courts, owing to the fact that he was himself a licence-holder for the sale of the produce of his Cardiff vineyards.