Earl of Wemyss and March: Landowner, conservationist and clan chief

Published on Tuesday 16 December 2008 20:51

Born: 19 January, 1912, at Stanway, Gloucestershire. Died: 12 December, 2008, in Edinburgh, aged 96.

THE 12th Earl of Wemyss and 8th of March was a landowner, conservationist and clan chief who proved an inspirational leader in his many years in various capacities with the National Trust for Scotland. His passing robs the nation of another earl who, like Lord Lauderdale, who died ten days earlier, was passionately committed to conserving Scotland's built heritage and promoting family identity.

A slight man, Wemyss's physical stature belied the range of his abilities. The fact that his lineage and descent made him a central figure in Scotland's aristocracy – he could count back to a Michael of Wemyss alive around 1180 – seemed to fire him all the more to undertake a role that would genuinely help the nation to which he counted himself fortunate to belong.

Thus, at the end of a life well into a tenth decade, he could reflect on a public career devoted to preserving heritage of art, landscape and historic buildings. For some 45 years until 1991 he played a leading role in the National Trust for Scotland, a period almost matched by his chairmanship of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments for Scotland. He was also a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts from 1975-88.

At the NTS he campaigned for houses of historical importance to be exempted from death duties and was an early post-Beeching advocate for the conversion of disused railway lines to cycleways.

A business sense verging on the shrewd led to the trust acquiring several unusual properties, notably 17th-century Craigievar castle in Aberdeenshire, as well as Culzean, Brodie and Falkland. He took a personal interest in such arrangements, and when Drum, the Aberdeenshire fortification that had been home to the Irvines of Drum for nearly seven centuries, was passed over to the NTS in 1976, he was present on the steps of the historic fortalice.

Five days before he died, his home at Gosford, East Lothian, played host to yet another meeting of the Convention of the Baronage of Scotland – invitations to which bore an admonition: "Lady Wemyss suggests you wear something warm because it can be chilly here in winter." In the event, hospitable hearths ensured a typically warm Wemyss welcome.

Earls of Wemyss trace their ancestry from Michael of Wemyss and Methil through Sir David Wemyss, one of the ambassadors sent to Norway in 1290 to bring the Maid of Norway to Scotland to settle the problem of Royal succession following the unexpected death of Alexander III in 1286.

Royal distinctions of a baronetcy and an earldom propelled the family forward, with the 4th earl becoming Lord High Admiral of Scotland and a commissioner for the Union of 1707. When the 3rd Earl of March, laird of the estate of Neidpath in Peeblesshire, died with no heir, the lands and the titles went through the 4th Duke of Queensberry to inheritance in 1810 by the Wemysses.

When the 5th earl married the daughter and heiress of Colonel Francis Charteris of Amisfield in East Lothian, he took the surname, with chiefship of the name now residing in the earldom. From the 18th century onwards, the principal seat of the family became Gosford House, a partly Adam building damaged by fire during army occupation in the Second World War. The family also owned more than 60,000 acres in Perth, Peebles, East Lothian and Gloucestershire, as well as Neidpath Castle.

By the time of the birth of Francis David Charteris in 1912, Gosford House contained one of the finest private collections of paintings in Scotland, with masterpieces by Botticelli, Rubens and Murillo and a magnificent series of family portraits by Ramsay, Raeburn, Kneller, Reynolds and Romney. When, nine years ago, a story circulated that a family trust planned to sell Botticelli's magnificent Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child – a work bought at auction by the 10th earl in 1859 for 200, a major fundraising campaign secured the picture for the National Galleries of Scotland for 10 million.

David Charteris was the eldest son of Lord Elcho, eldest son and heir of the 11th Earl of Wemyss. His younger brother Martin (later Lord Charteris of Amisfield) would become private secretary to the Queen and then provost of Eton. Aged four, David gained the courtesy title Lord Elcho and became heir to his grandfather's peerages on the death of his father, Hugo, a lieutenant in the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars who died in action in Egypt in the First World War on Easter Sunday 1916.

The young Elcho was educated at Eton, studying history at Balliol College, Oxford, and taking postgraduate courses in agriculture at Oxford and Cambridge.

He succeeded to the earldom on the death of his grandfather in 1937, in the same year joining the Colonial Service, serving as an assistant district commissioner in Basutoland and with the Basuto troops in the Middle East during the Second World War.

In 1940 he married Mavis "Babs" Murray, a member of a well-known Cape Town family. In 1954, after his eight-year old son and heir, Lord Elcho, died in a road accident, Lord Wemyss dropped the title as having too many unhappy associations, for since 1715, five heirs had died before succeeding to the earldom. In future, he announced, heirs would by courtesy be styled Lord Neidpath.

On his return to his family estates in Scotland, he became involved in public life and took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Wemyss of Wemyss, a title conferred in 1824.

The undoubted apex in his many ceremonial offices was his being appointed three times to represent the Queen as lord high commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland – and through recommendations from very different prime ministers – in 1959 and 1960 through Harold Macmillan, and 17 years later via James Callaghan.

A strong and committed Christian, Wemyss served on the Scottish Churches Council from 1964-71, and for a time on the World Council of Churches as well as being president of the National Bible Society of Scotland for 23 years. The complete East Lothian man, he was lord lieutenant for his county for two decades until 1987, and was an elder at Aberlady Kirk.

He relished his role as a lieutenant of the Royal Company of Archers (Queen's bodyguard for Scotland), and his place as Lord clerk register of Scotland, the oldest surviving great office of state in Scotland, with origins in the 13th century. Along with the lord justice clerk (Lord Gill); the lord advocate (Elish Angiolini) and the keeper of the great seal (Alex Salmond), he was a commissioner for the keeping of the regalia of Scotland, the group formed to care for the Honours of Scotland after they were rediscovered in a strongroom in Edinburgh Castle in 1818 by Sir Walter Scott.

It came as little surprise to those who knew Lord Wemyss that he was appointed a knight of the thistle – Scotland's highest order of chivalry – in 1966, while his business talents saw him serving on the boards of Standard Life and Scottish Television. Into great age, he was a regular attender at meetings of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs.

In spite of frailty and increasing deafness, Lord Wemyss remained alert and content, spending a most enjoyable time in village celebrations when he and his countess reopened the refurbished hall in Aberlady two years ago.

After the death of his first wife in 1988 he married, in 1995, Shelagh Kennedy ne Thrift, property manager of the National Trust for Scotland's Georgian House in Edinburgh. By his first marriage Lord Wemyss had two sons and two daughters. A son and a daughter predeceased him. Lord Neidpath, Lord Wemyss's surviving son, becomes 13th earl.