A few eyebrows were raised when 79-year-old Dame Diana Rigg joined the cast of ITV’s Victoria series 2 as the Duchess of Buccleuch, a formidable new Lady in Waiting who takes up her position at Buckingham Palace under a new Conservative government.
In reality however Charlotte Anne was only 30 when she became Mistress of the Robes and The Edinburgh Reporter takes look at the real life of the Duchess and her relationship with the Queen which differs greatly from her portrayal in the show.
Charlotte Anne Montagu Douglas Scott was born Lady Charlotte Anne Thynne in Longleat, Wiltshire on 10 April 1811. She was the youngest daughter of Thomas Thynne the 2nd Marquess of Bath.
In March 1829 she married the 5th Duke of Buccleuch, Walter Francis Montagu-Douglas-Scott and received her title.
According to the journal The Lady’s Realm, their engagement resulted when the young Duke visited her father and met Lady Charlotte. As he was leaving he saw tears in her eyes which prompted him to turn his coach around and approach her father directly to ask for her hand in marriage.
The wedding took place at St George’s, Hanover Square, London and Charlotte Anne became the fifth Duchess of Buccleuch and seventh Duchess of Queensberry.
Her husband had succeeded to the dukedom at the age of thirteen upon his father’s death and his guardian was his father’s great friend Sir Walter Scott of nearby Abbotsford House. The marriage was one that Sir Walter Scott very much approved of.
The couple would produce three daughters and four sons and stayed at Dalkeith Palace just outside Edinburgh where they were great collectors of French furniture and paintings from throughout Europe.
In the TV series Prime Minister Robert Peel was hesitant about Victoria’s choice of lady to replace Harriet Sutherland as Mistress of the Robes, but in real life he was the one who chose the Duchess.
In 1841, she succeeded the Duchess of Sutherland as Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria. Her husband was a staunch Conservative and became Lord Privy Seal in Peel’s ministry from 1842 to 1846.
Whilst Diana Rigg’s Duchess seems to annoy the young Queen Victoria at first, in real life the pair became firm friends and Victoria was known to have considered the Duchess to be “an agreeable, sensible, clever little person.”
In 1842 The Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch helped entertain the Queen and Prince Albert when they arrived at Dalkeith and a bronze statue inside Bowhill House by Joseph Edgar Boehm depicts the duke receiving a stirrup cup from John Brown.
Victoria later became godmother for the Duchess’ eldest daughter Victoria Alexandrine, who was christened at Buckingham Palace in April 1845.
The Duchess of Buccleuch resigned the post of Mistress of the Robes in 1846, and was succeeded by the Duchess of Sutherland.
The Duchess’s faith was influenced by her brother, the Reverend Lord John Thynne, who was high church canon of Westminster Abbey and to the Duke’s distress, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1860, “after struggling with her conscience for many years over the distress it would cause her husband.”
The Duchess enjoyed gardening and landscaping, and spent much time overseeing the gardens of Drumlanrig Castle.
Her husband Walter Francis died in April 1884, and she moved to Ditton Park in Slough.
She died at Ditton Park on 28 March 1895, and was buried at Dalkeith although not in the same grave as her husband due to religious differences.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
