Fox Maule-Ramsay, 11th Earl of Dalhousie

Fox Maule by Thomas Duncan

Dalhousie was the eldest son of William Maule, 1st Baron Panmure, and a grandson of George Ramsay, 8th Earl of Dalhousie. Christened Fox as a compliment to Charles James Fox, the great Whig, he served for a term in the Army.[1]

Fox Maule was born in Brechin Castle, on 22 April 1801. He was educated at the Charter House, London. In 1819 he received his commission as ensign in the 79th Regiment of Cameron Highlanders.[2]

For some years he served in Canada on the staff of his uncle, the Earl of Dalhousie. In 1831, having attained to the rank of captain, he retired from the army, and having married the Hon. Montagu, daughter of the second Lord Abercrombie, he took up his residence at Dalguise House, on the banks of the Tay, near Dunkeld. This was his home for twenty years.[3]

Fox Maule campaigned during the first election for Perthshire, canvassing in favour of his friend, the Marquis of Breadalbane, then Lord Ormelie. As he afterwards said, "I was politically born then." At the next election, in 1834, he was returned as member for Perthshire. Having lost his seat at the next election, he was returned for the Elgin Burghs. Having resigned his seat for the Elgin Burghs, he was elected by the city of Perth, which he continued to represent for ten years, until he was called to the House of Lords after his father's death.[3]

In 1835 he entered the House of Commons as member for Perthshire. In the ministry of Lord Melbourne (1835–1841), Maule was Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and under Lord John Russell, he was Secretary at War from July 1846 to January 1852, when for two or three weeks he was President of the Board of Control.[1]

In April 1852, he succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Panmure. In February 1855, he joined Lord Palmerston's cabinet, filling the new office of Secretary of State for War. Lord Panmure held this office until February 1858. He was at the War Office during the concluding period of the Crimean War, and met a good deal of criticism.[1] He was Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland from 1853 until his death.

Always interested in church matters, Dalhousie was a prominent supporter of the Free Church of Scotland after it split from the Church of Scotland in the disruption of 1843. In December 1860, he succeeded his kinsman, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie, as 11th Earl of Dalhousie.[1] He shortly afterwards changed his surname to "Maule-Ramsay" (his father had changed his surname to "Maule" from the family's patronymic "Ramsay" before being created Baron Panmure).[4]

Fox Maule from Royal Collection Trust

The arms of Lord Panmure (albeit incorrectly tinctured) at Woolwich Arsenal

He died in Brechin Castle on 6 July 1874 in the same room in which he had been born.[3]

For thirty years he was returned by the Free Presbytery of Dunkeld as their representative elder to the General Assembly, and took an active part in its proceedings. After the Disruption, when so many proprietors refused sites for the building of churches and manses, it was mainly through his speeches in Parliament that the difficulty was surmounted. He laid the foundation stone for the new Free Church at Dunkeld.[3]

Maule was appointed Senior Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1832, and later (as Lord Panmure) Deputy Grand Master in 1857.[5] He was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1867.[5] In 1860, Panmure Lodge (now No. 723) was warranted, being named after the then Deputy Grand Master.[5]

Lord Dalhousie married the Hon. Montague, daughter of George Abercromby, 2nd Baron Abercromby, in 1831. They had no children. She died in November 1853, aged 46. Lord Dalhousie died July 1874, aged 73. On his death, the barony of Panmure became extinct, but the earldom of Dalhousie (and its subsidiary titles) passed to his cousin, George Ramsay.[1]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl of Dalhousie