THE OLDEST PEER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20281, 3 December 1935, Page 6

THE OLDEST PEER

LATE EARL OF MORTON The Earl of Morton, the oldest peer, and senior member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, died recently, says the “Daily Telegraph.” He would have been 91 on November 5. He joined the Royal Yacht Squadron seventy-four years ago, when he was Lord Aberbour. This was at a time when the second Earl of Wilton was Commondore, and actually twenty years before King Edward VII., as Prince of Wales, held that office. In Victorian days the Earl of Morton owned the sailing schooners Merlin and Myth, and later several steam yachts, including Queen of the Isles, Olivia, and Cressida. His last vessel was the Majesta, a steam yacht of 170 tons. Eight years ago he and the Countess of Morton celebrated their golden wedding. It has been said of them that, during'the whole of their married life they were only one day apart from one ..another, a storm being the cause. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding they were each presented with an ornament in the shape of a golden stag. The appropriateness of the gift in regard to the Earl was undoubted, for in that year, at the age of 83, he was skilful enough to account for nine stags with ten cartridges. When war broke out he was seventy, but for two years he served as Head Coast Watcher with the Royal Navy at sea. An Accident Last March he was in a motor-car collision in Scotland, but was not Injured. Surviving the Earl (who had held the title for fifty years) are the Countess of Morton, fourth daughter of the second Lord de Mauley, and two sons. The eldest son of the marriage, Sholto Charles, Lord Aberbour, died in 1911, when he was thirty-two. He married Minnie Christina Brenda, daughter of Admiral of the Fleet Lord John Hay, and their son, Lord Aberdour, succeeds to the earldom. He is 28. The Earls of Morton belong to an historic Scottish family, a member of which was second chief of the house of Douglas seven centuries ago. The earldom was conferred in 1458 on the third Lord Dalkeith on his marriage with Princess Joanna, the deaf and dumb daughter of James I of Scotland. The fourth Earl, after being Lord Chancellor under Mary Queen of Scots, was obliged to leave the country for his share in the murder of Rizzio. On Mary’s abdication he became Regent of Scotland, but in 1581 he was executed for high treason." William, the sixth earl, waS one of the richest subjects of the seventeenth century and espoused the Royal cause so zealously in the Civil War that he sold great estates in order to provide funds for it. Another earl was confined for three months in the Bastille in 1746.