Rory, Marquess of Badenoch

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 The Most Hon. Ruairidh Eanrig Raibeart Chattan-Stewart-Gunn-Ay KT TD DL FRSE , 5th Marquess of Badenoch, 14th Marquess of Etteridge, was born 27 October 1947, the eldest son of Henry Andrew Ian Charles James, 4th Marquess of Badenoch (at that time Earl of Ardchronie), and his marchioness, his second cousin Margery Anne Margaret Fiona, Ay-Stewart-Gunn, daughter of Thomas, Lord Arngask, and his lady, Fiona Ivy Flora Helen, the daughter of Torquil Roderick Angus McCammond of McCammond. He is by inheritance through various lines the holder of the titles of Marquess of Badenoch (1837); Marquess (or by preferred usage ‘Marquis’, the title being Scots and just antedating the Union of Crowns: a last trace of the Auld Alliance with France) of Etteridge (created as an earldom in 1445, and advanced to a marquessate in 1603); Earl of Ardchronie (1398); and the subsidiary peerage titles of Earl of Drumochter (1419); Viscount Dalnessie (advanced in 1609 from the the Lordship of Parliament 1437); Viscount Strathmashie (likewise advanced in 1609 from the the Lordship of Parliament 1448); Baron Westerdale (1707, as a regrant of the Lordship of Parliament of 1582); Lord Arngask (1241); Lord Dalnaspidal (1237); Lord Lynchat (1536); and Lord Tullybelton (1442). Lordships of Parliament are the Scots equivalent of English baronies: Scots baronies are feudal, and are not peerage titles. The marquessate of Badenoch, like the late Dukedom, is in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The barony of Westerdale is in the Peerage of Great Britain. The other titles held by the present Marquess are in the Peerage of Scotland.

The courtesy titles as used by heirs to the marquessate since the reversion are, for the heir apparent, Earl of Ardchronie; for his heir apparent, Viscount Dalnessie, or Lady Lynchat if female, and for a heir presumptive to the heir apparent, Lord Lynchat; for Dalnessie’s   heir, Baron Westerdale; and for heirs presumptive or heirs of a heiress, the Master of Lynchat.

The current Marquess was known as Dalnessie from his birth to his father’s accession, and from his father’s accession to his own as Ardchronie. His son, Ian Machar Adomnán Conval, Earl of Ardchronie, with whom he has quarrelled, has no legitimate issue. Gerry, Master of Lynchat, the eventual heir presumptive, is a noted amateur golfer.

The parents of the present Marquess, the 4th Marquess and his marchioness, were both descended of the first Duke of Badenoch, so created in 1887 by advancement from the marquessate of Badenoch created in 1837; that dukedom reverted, on the failure of the senior line of Ay-Stewart-Gunn, in 1917. Although the marquessate of Etteridge is by far the older, it was, during the period of the dukedom, used as the courtesy title of the heirs apparent to that dukedom; since the reversion, the marquesses of Badenoch have generally been known by the Badenoch title, rather than the Etteridge title.

A tall, gruff, stern, old-fashioned, and very formal Highland aristocrat, Calvinist in temperament but Anglican by Jacobite inheritance, whose family have never quite got over reverting to the marquessate from a dukedom, the present Lord Badenoch is a major Highland landowner and active in the affairs of the Scottish Conservative Party; and one of the five or so best shots in Scotland.

 As is the case with the Duke of Taunton and the Clan Stewart of Camserney, and the Duke of Hamilton and Clan Douglas, Lord Badenoch’s possession of a compound surname precludes his being recognised by the Lyon Court as Chief of the Shaw sept the Clan Ay of Glen Tromie. He is however properly given the Gaelic honorifics of ‘  Mac Sheumais Mór’, ‘Mac Sheumais mhic Seaghdh’,   and   ‘Mac mhic Seaghdh Bàideanaich’ . As his surname and titles suggest, he has inherited land and position from the Clans Gunn, in Caithness and Sutherland; Stewart, from Appin to the Borders; the confederate clans of Clan Chattan, from Perthshire to Lochaber; and Ay, in Strathspey: much of it acquired in the unsettled times after the destruction of the Comyn lordship in Badenoch, and much of it contested for against the Gordons of Huntly.

That the marquessate of Badenoch was created in 1837; advanced to a dukedom in 1887; and reverted in 1917, has been and remains the subject of some degree of Highland superstition.

Life
Born in the lifetime of his grandfather, the first marquess after reversion, Rory Badenoch from an early age was torn between his disdain of a non-Scots peerage and a hankering for the glory of ducal status. His father, in particular, had reacted to the family situation by becoming a thorough-going ‘Professional Highlander’: as witness the christening of his son. In the days when the SNP were, and were derided as, the ‘Tartan Tories’, and not without their share of Romantic Jacobites, the 4th Marquess was very much a shortbread-tin Scot, who moved in a Celtic mist shot through with lights from Sir Walter Scott’s œuvre. In reaction, the present Marquess in his youth became, as a he has remained, an adamant Unionist and orthodox, ‘Dry’ Tory – although a Scots chauvinist of his own special sort, with an often open contempt for the ‘mere English’.

He also early resolved to restore, not the dukedom, which was not in his power to regain, but the family estates; which is why he chose to go on to the then RAC rather to university. Inadvertently, he has, in the course of educating himself and others over many decades in rural land management, been elected on that basis a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Education
Lord Badenoch was educated at Fettes and at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, now the RAU. He then undertook the ARCC short course at RMA Sandhurst, passing out of the Short Course in 1968, and was commissioned into – somewhat ironically – the Gordon Highlanders (now part of 4 SCOTS), as D Coy 51st Highland Volunteers (TAVR II), now 7 SCOTS after numerous amalgamations including that as 51 HIGHLAND.

Marriage and family
He married, firstly, in 1970, the Hon. Catriona Grant. Upon her death of ovarian cancer in 1981, he married, in 1983, Fiona Mary Christian Margery Beaton-Dallas, sister of the present Dowager Countess of Freuchie. His son Ian, Earl of Ardchronie, was born of this second marriage, in 1985.

Career
Rather to his disappointment, Rory Badenoch did not, as a Territorial, see any real action during his service. He concentrated instead upon the management of his considerable estates, and upon putting them back onto a secure footing; upon Conservative and Unionist politics (he was rather ahead of the field in seeing the SNP as a threat rather than as the Tartan Tories of old); upon his family; and upon becoming one of the best guns (and, as an angler, one of the best rods) in Scotland.’

He has served since 1994 as a Deputy Lieutenant for the Inverness lieutenancy area. He is a Member of the Royal Company of Archers and of the Roxburghe Club; and a very active member of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland; the Royal Scottish Forestry Society; and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

Lord Badenoch describes himself as ‘a despairing communicant’ of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Raittsburn
For some four decades, the primary interest of Lord Badenoch has been the preservation and restoration of the Raittsburn Estate and of Raittsburn Castle, his primary seat. The Castle is scheduled Category A; its gardens, grounds, and policies, major restoration having been completed in 2002, are now once more listed in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland.

Titles from birth
<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-left:0.49in;margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">Viscount Dalnessie, 1947 – 1953 Earl of Ardchronie, 1953 – 1978 Marquess of Badenoch, 1978 – 1980 Marquess of Badenoch TD, 1980 – 1981 Marquess of Badenoch KT TD, 1981 – 1994 Marquess of Badenoch KT TD DL, 1994 – 1998 Marquess of Badenoch KT TD DL FRSE, 1998 –

Honours
<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-left:0.49in;margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">Knight of the Order of the Thistle, 1981 Territorial Decoration, 1980 Deputy Lieutenant, Inverness lieutenancy area, 1994 FRSE, 1998

Coronet
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">The coronet of a Marquess

Crest
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">A Highland wild cat sejant erect proper

Escutcheon
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">Quarterly: 1st grand quarter, the Stuart Royal Arms (viz. quarterly: 1st and 4th, France and England quarterly; 2nd, Scotland; 3rd; Ireland), debruised of a baton Argent, the whole within a bordure compony Gules and Or, marking the famous ‘Double Bastardy of Badenoch’; 2nd grand quarter, quarterly, 1st quarter Or, a lion rampant Gules, armed and langued Azure, a fess chequy Azure and Argent, a bordure of the third overall; 2nd Argent, on a mount Vert a Scots pine proper, a closed hand Gules fess-wise grasping a dagger of the same palewise its point in base in dexter chief; 3rd per pale Gules and Azure a lymphad Or sailed, flagged, and bannered of the first and second countercharged beneath two estoiles of the third, a salmon naiant Or upon a chief countercharged of the first and second; 4th Or a fess Gules three boars’ heads erased of the second langued Azure, armed of the first, two and one; 3rd grand quarter, quarterly, 1st quarter Azure a saltire Or charged at centre point with the Red Hand of Ulster, a chief of the second; 2nd Argent two pallets Sable, bordured Gules overall; 3rd Argent three lymphads Sable two and one a chief of the second; 4th Or a lymphad Sable sailed, flagged, and bannered Azure a chief chequy Gules and the first; 4th grand quarter, quarterly, 1st quarter barry of six Or and Gules countercharged quarterly; 2nd Azure a fess Or cottised of the second, three garbs of the second two and one; 3rd Argent a chevron Gules three mullets of five points of the second a bordure engrailed Sable overall; 4th Sable a saltire Argent, upon a chief of the second three crosses croslet fitchy of the first.

Supporters
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">Dexter: A wolf, proper

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">Sinister: A Highland wild cat, proper

Mottoes
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">Homo homini lupus est (Latin, Man is wolf to man ):; the dispossessed Comyns had rejoiced in a Chief known as the Wolf of Badenoch

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">Na Bean Ris A Chat (Scots Gaelic, Touch not the cat ), a common Clan Chattan motto and war-cry

Tartan
<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">The tartan is personal to the family to the third degree of the Marquesses of Badenoch.