As time passed on, and his weakness increased, reading and writing, which had been the chief solace of his life, were of course no longer possible to him. He suffered little bodily pain during his last illness, but much weariness and depression, which he bore with his usual quiet fortitude and patience; and the gradual declension of his remarkable mental faculties, his keen intellect, vivid imagination, and retentive memory, was (it is a consolation to believe) far less distressing to himself than it was to the devoted watchers at his sick-bed. In the summer of 1900 he was removed to Dumfries House, in the hope that its more bracing air might be beneficial to him. He had always, as has been already remarked, loved the beautiful old home of his Crichton ancestors, which both within and without was one of the most notable works of the brothers Adam, although the amenity of its surroundings had been to some extent spoiled by the numerous coalpits. "Falkland is probably, the most luxurious of my houses," he had once remarked, "but I think Dumfries House is, perhaps, the homeliest of them all." The improvement to his health wrought by this change was unhappily only transient: he grew gradually weaker, and on October 9, 1900, a few hours after being attacked by a second stroke, he quietly breathed his last, being then in the fifty-fourth year of his age.
1900, Death and funeral
Bute was buried, according to his own wish, in the chapel close to the sea, within the grounds of Mountstuart, which he had fitted up some twenty years previously for Catholic worship. The funeral service was all the more impressive because of hired pomp and grandeur there was absolutely none. His coffin, made by his own carpenters, was borne by his own workmen from Dumfries House to the little wayside station, whence it was conveyed to the sea, and thence across the Firth of Clyde to Kilchattan Bay, in Bute, where a great assemblage awaited its arrival, and followed it for nearly five miles on foot, the only carriage being that of the widow. One who was present thus describes the sad procession:
Through the russet and gold of the October woods it passed, preceded by the cross and a long array of bishops and clergy, and followed by the young sons, the Duke of Norfolk, Lords Loudoun, Glasgow, and Herries, and many other notable people. Night was falling as our cortége reached the little chapel on the shore where the remains were to rest; and the pine torches carried by the assistants threw a sombre glare on the coffin, on which were laid a black and gold pall, and the dead peer's coronet and the chain and green velvet mantle of the Thistle. Vespers of the dead were sung: black-robed sisters watched by the bier all night; and next morning the dirge was chanted, the requiem mass celebrated, the five absolutions reserved for prelates and great nobles solemnly pronounced. The single bell tolled from the little turret as the mourners silently dispersed, leaving John Lord Bute to rest in peace within the ivy-covered walls washed by the waves which encircled his island home.
A few days after the last sad rites, Bute's widow, with her daughter and three sons, left England for the Holy Land, in order to carry out his long-cherished desire that his heart should be interred in the sacred soil of Olivet. It was reverently laid in the tiny garden of the Franciscans, outside the humble chapel known as Dominus Flevit—"The Lord wept"—the traditional spot, half-way up the holy mountain, where the Saviour shed tears over the approaching fate of the beloved city. An oleander tree alone marks the place of sepulture; but at the entrance of the little sanctuary is affixed a marble tablet bearing the following inscription:[[13]]
PAX ESTO AETERNA
ANIMAE PIENTISSIMAE
JOANNIS PATRICII MARCHIONIS III DE BUTE
IN SCOTIA
VII ID OCTOBR
ANNO DOMINI MDCCCC
MORTEM IN CHRISTO OBEUNTIS
CUJUS COR
IN TERRAM SANCTAM
SUPREMA TESTAMENTI CAUTIONE
DELATUM
GUENDOLINA CONJUX
IN HORTO
HUIC DOMINUS FLEVIT AEDICULAE
ANNEXO
QUATUOR ADSISTENTIBUS FILIIS
ID NOVEMBR EODEM ANNO
PROPRIIS RELIGIOSE MANIBUS
SEPELIVIT
[[1]] Conversing with a friend not long before his death, Bute thus characteristically referred to the point of view from which he regarded his acquisition of these two interesting estates. "Having bound myself to provide landed property of a certain value for my younger sons, I looked about for places which I might play with during my own life, and leave to them afterwards. Hence Falkland and Pluscarden."
[[2]] The Valliscaulians ("Val des Choux" was the name of their first house, in Burgundy), founded about 1193 by Viard, a Carthusian lay-brother, had about thirty houses, most of them in France. There were none in England, but three in Scotland—Pluscarden, Beauly, and Ardchattan, of which the last two became Cistercian priories a century before the Reformation. The Order dwindled and became finally extinct about thirty years prior to the French Revolution.
[[3]] Lord Merries held the office of Lord-Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorks from 1880 until his death in 1908.