The Farl of Glasgow.

Evening Star, Issue 8770, 10 March 1892, Page 3

The Farl of Glasgow.

A contributor to the Auckland ' Herald' supplies the following details relative to the family history of our new Governor : The present Earl of Glasgow is a second or third cousin of the late Earl, who died in 1890. The Earl before that, the late Earl'a half-brother, was (like the present) a naval officer, having attained the rank of commander. He was born in 1792, and waa long known in Bute, Cumbrae, and about Largs, in Ayrshire, as Vifcount Kelbume, up to the year 1843, when he succeeded his father in the earldom. He was a very gruff character, and was known and feared and ahunned for his rudeness to " the common people." He had notices posted up at his park near Largs stating that there was no thoroughfare, and used always to turn people back whom he met in the grounds. People who were in the habit of making a short cat through his lordship's territory fell upon a good way of getting to windward of him, "old salt" though he waa. When they spied Lord Kelburne approaching, they began to saunter about in various directions, in order to make the enemy think they were going in the opposite direction from what they really wished to go. As Boon as the noble commander espied them he bore down apon them full sail, and, by way of firing a round shot across the aggressor's bowß, demanded of them to " Turn round and go back." This order, of course, was gladly obeyed, and the dragon of the place appeased. The writer was once told by a lady—a real lady, mind you—who was running the gauntlet through Kelburne House grounds, under the impression that the dragon was not at home, when, to her horror, the said dragon appeared as large and as fierce as life before her. Even her sex did not protect her from his lordship's rudeness. He demanded her business there. She replied that she had lost her way to the gardener's house, and inquired the way. "Go to the devil," was the abrupt reply. It is commonly said that a woman will always manage to have the liißt word, In this case, Miss Robertson, though greatly shocked, determined to give a Roland for Lord Kelburne's Oliver, and boldly rejoined: "Then, I suppose I must go to you." This dragon was numbered with his fathers in the year 1869. It was not, however, till IS9O that the courtesy title of Viscount Kelburne, which had been in disuse since 1543, was revived in the doubtless much more amiable person of the eldest son of the present Earl of Glasgow. Although the new Governor has no seat in the House of Lords, the fact of hia being an earl in the peerage of Scotland givea him higher rank or precedence than our late Governor, whoee earldom dates long subsequent to the Union of 1707, since which event no creations have been made in the peerage of Scotland. The family of Boyle, Eirls of Glasgow, is of very ancient Scottish lineage, having been for centuries settled in Aynhire and Buteshire. None of the peerages of the family, however, date previous to the Revolution of 16SSS9.

For the benefit of the uninformed it may be explained that a Scottish peer, as such, is, perhaps, the only British Buhject who is debarred from sitting in the House of Commons, and who has no right as a peer to take his seat in the House of Lords. He may, indeed, be elected by h|a fellow Scottish peers as crn of the twenty-two representatives in the House of Lords of the peers of Scotland. This is his only way of access to political life ; and if he be a Liberal in politics, it is a very slight chance, for the peers as a body are strongly Conser vative. It is different with peers of Ireland, who may be elected for an English constituency provided they have not already sat in the House of Lords, which would only be as a representative Irish peer. One notable instance of this was the late Viscount Palmeraton, who was in the peerage of Ireland, and who sat in the House of Commons till he died at the age of eightyfive, being at that time Prime Minuter of England. '